National Global Imaginaries

This paper uses Sayyid's concept of Eurocentrism to analyse neoconservative media discourse following the September 11 attacks. Using predicate analysis on articles from The Weekly Standard magazine, this study aims to determine how neoconservative writers created a Muslim subjectivity following the attacks in order to make certain courses of action appear necessary and inevitable. Four subject positions emerged from the analysis: passive Muslims, active Muslims, the passive West, and the active West. By containing and controlling the representation of 'Islam' and 'Muslims' through these binaries, neoconservatives endeavoured to stabilise the identities of the players in the 'war on terrorism', and in doing so, advanced a Eurocentric discourse that attempted to re-centre the West as the vehicle of human progress, with America as its natural leader. This paper concludes that basing the 'war on terror' entirely around identities effectively made Eurocentrism (and Islamism) self-reinforcing, as the successful restriction of identities precluded challenges to the neoconservative discourse from any position other than a 'Muslim' subjectivity.

Human rights originated as a political claim made by movements contesting state power. Recently, they have become the property of states: a juridical right that is for the state to give. I track this transformation through changes in responses to humanitarian crises. Humanitarian crises are seen to issue from two sorts of states-rogue states and failed states-both of whom violate, by commission or omission, the rights of their subjects. Given the failure of these states to protect the rights of their citizens, policymakers and rights advocates call for external intervention, or state-building. In understandings of state-building, human rights are for the state; or more correctly the state-being-built; to give, reversing the development of human rights from a set of political movements that protested unjust state power.

When we study human rights empirically, what do we mean to study? The existence of institutions that enable the realization of rights or the enjoyment of those rights? The absence of flagrant violations of some of the basic individual rights or the sense that one's rights will not be flagrantly violated? What theory of human rights should we use? Most positive theory of human rights-for example, empirical theories about the correlation between political institutions or economic conditions on human rights recognition-are based on the first kind of normative human rights theory, the one that defines rights outside of the struggle for them. This article puts forward a methodology for the empirical study of human rights from the inside: do people enjoy their human rights? Using the Latin American Public Opinion Project democracy survey database, the authors propose a new way to measure human rights.

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over 'the national' driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands - first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second, that they engage with, critique and challenge exclusionary or heroic modes of nationalism. Our findings, based on the analysis of official discourse and 60 open group discussions conducted in Austria, Germany and Poland, suggest that reflexive particularism is manifested in an ongoing negotiation between variable modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward the supranational or pan-European. More specifically, reflexive particularism is expressed in co-evolving articulations of Europeanness and shared European memory practices that include: affirmative and ambivalent perspectives; sceptical narratives about nationhood (for example those that emphasize legacies of perpetratorship); and a disposition to (ex)change perspectives and recognize the claims of Others.

Recent scholarship in trauma and postcolonial studies has called for more wide-ranging and at the same time more specific paradigms in trauma theory in order to accommodate the complexities of trauma evidenced in postcolonial writing. The work of sociologist Kai Erikson provides a useful model for unpacking the diachronic nature of postcolonial trauma, and for acknowledging the multiple social fractures that trauma inflicts. In a case study demonstrating Erikson's applicability, I show how common tropes of trauma narrative are used as more than an adherence to convention in Marinovich and Silva's memoir, The Bang-Bang Club, which recounts the experiences of white South African photographers covering Soweto's Hostel War in the early 1990s. These narrative strategies produce a space of non-resolution in which the trauma of violence and witnessing can appear.

There have been two distinctive aspects to James Tully's approach to the study of imperialism over the years, and both are put to work in these remarkable volumes.1 The first is his belief in two seemingly contradictory claims: (i) that imperialism is much more pervasive than usually thought (conceptually, historically and practically); and yet (ii) that there are many more forms of resistance to it than usually appreciated. The second is the way Tully places the situation of indigenous peoples at the heart of his analysis.

In this article, I explore how the Simmelian concept of "adventure" can serve as a symbolic category providing a framework for understanding two Chinese Jamaicans' recollections of childhood migration and their attempts to mediate and synthesize the tensions caused by that experience into an overall expression of identity. The Simmelian adventure recognizes that the very process of synthesizing life events draws attention to the disconnections and disruptions-what Simmel defines as "dualities"-that Simmel concludes are characteristic of modern identities. The Chinese Jamaican narratives in this study display the dualities of the adventures as posited by Simmel and as such, reconfirm the understanding of the Caribbean as a site of modernity and recognize both the experiences and contributions of a minority group in this region as being significant for our understanding of modern diasporic identities in general and, more specifically, in the Caribbean.

This paper investigates the pertinent issues of the arguments on human capital depletion, specifically in the context of the more recent literature that seeks to explain the phenomenon in the context of the English speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It further assesses return migration policies of the region in an attempt to ascertain their practicality in redressing skills depletion or accumulation for member states. Clearly, facilitation policies are essential, but there is no documented analysis on their effectiveness, despite the tendency to speak of their usefulness. The main motivation for having return facilitation policies, emerged out of recognition of the potential of the Diaspora and what they can offer for the development of CARICOM nations. There is a tendency for return facilitation policies to favour life cycle re-migrants or retirees with affinity to their homeland, whatever the reason. From observation the all inclusive nature of the return facilitation policy construct does not present a framework for attracting skilled individuals in their productive age. The problem with this is that the retirement age in most member states does not allow for retirees to reenter the workforce to impart knowledge or skills, outside of investment initiatives. This general weakness in return facilitation policy limits what optimally a re-migrant can offer. The counterfactual that return migrants bring with them networks and links from which their home country can benefit is also potentially restricted by the same token.

Recent trends of mass-level euroscepticism seriously challenge Deutsch's transactionalist theory that increased transnational interactions trigger support for further political integration. While transnational interactions have indeed proliferated, public support for European integration has diminished. This article aims to solve this puzzle by arguing that transnational interaction is highly stratified across society. Its impact on EU support therefore only applies to a small portion of the public. The rest of the population not only fails to be prompted to support the integration process, but may see it as a threat to their realm. This is even more the case as, parallel to European integration, global trends of integration create tensions in national societies. The following hypotheses are proposed: first, the more transnational an individual, the less she or he is prone to be eurosceptical; and second, this effect is more pronounced in countries that are more globalised. A multilevel ordinal logit analysis of survey data from the 2006 Eurobarometer wave 65.1 confirms these hypotheses.

Examining two published narrative accounts of the signing of Treaty 8 in northwest Canada at the close of the nineteenth century, this essay highlights how the administrative practices and spatial discourses inscribed in the accounts of Charles Mair and Dr O C Edwards are implicated in the geographical fashioning of the Canadian north. The Treaty 8 Commissions of 1899 and 1900 were empowered by the Dominion Government of Canada to extinguish Aboriginal title to the vast territory of the Athabasca District. What the written narrative accounts of the treaty signing reveal are how the administrative practices of treaty making were strongly marked by the physicalities of travel, by the visual economies of spatial and cultural encounter, and by the recoding of the social and historical geographies of Aboriginal occupancy by an emergent national order. The accounts examined in the essay underscore how the geographies of northern Canada have been particularly drawn around the misapprehending of the patterns of Aboriginal land use and economy within governmental frames of knowledge.

This article addresses a crucial dimension which has distinguished studies of colonialism in Malaysia from those of other formerly colonized lands: the lack of a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the colonized thought and wrote about their colonial experiences. Aljunied argues that Malay intellectuals in the postwar period have indeed contributed to the formulation of theories about colonialism in Malaysia in particular and the Malay world in general. In demonstrating such a claim, this article directs its analytical gaze to a seminal text entitled Perjuangan Kita written by a Malay intellectual and activist, Dr Burhanuddin Al-Helmy (1911-1969). By exploring a variety of influences that shaped Burhanuddin's ideas, the methods he applied to systematically explain the roots and persistence of colonialism in the Malay world, and his definition and discussion of the causes and impact of colonialism, the article attempts to place Burhanuddin's ideas within the ranks of established Third World theories of colonialism in his time.

It is argued that what have usually been called 'slave narratives' sometimes more accurately describe 'freedom narratives', especially when individuals who had regained their freedom wrote or dictated such accounts. Most stories that are associated with slavery often focus on the quest for and achievement of freedom through escape, self-purchase or other means. Moreover, it is argued here that there is a distinction between narratives composed by individuals who had once been free in Africa and those who were born into slavery in the Americas. By focusing on the lives of four individuals, Venture Smith, Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano), Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu, this article assesses the importance of regaining lost freedom as a motive in compiling the narratives and life histories of these individuals. Smith, Vassa and Baquaqua left autobiographical accounts of their lives, while Kaba left a significant paper trail that allows a study of his life, moving from freedom in Africa to slavery and then emancipation in Jamaica. Mediated by the 'Middle Passage', these texts demonstrate a consciousness of lost freedom and the importance of re-achieving that status, however contested and understood.

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced.

This paper examines the relationship between the nation-state and migration through the activities of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM operates at the intersection of nation-states, international human rights regimes, and neo-liberal governance. We find that the IOM enforces the exclusions of asylum seekers and maintains the central role of nation-states in ordering global flows of migration. In addition, we argue that the IOM acts on behalf of nation-states by using the language of international human rights, as though working in the interests of migrants and refugees. In providing a geographic appraisal of the IOM alongside its image and presentation with an analysis of its activities on voluntary returns, we address the new spaces of 'networked' governance that control and order migratory flows in the interests of nation-states.

This article examines the human rights claims made by the George W. Bush Administrations of their post 9/11 foreign and security policy. Two common scholastic explanations of this narrative are evaluated: (i) that human rights constitute, at least in part, independent foreign policy goals and; (ii) that the human rights claims of policymakers can be dismissed as hypocritical rhetoric. The article informs and progresses this debate by revisiting the works of the early twentieth century political culture theorists Gabriel Almond, Graham Wallas and Edward Bernays. The article details the consistent use of a human rights narrative by administration officials as a technique of political discipline. The article identifies five linguistic mechanisms through which this technique of discipline was made manifest in practice. The article thereby explains how a human rights narrative was employed as an instrument to inculcate, rather than describe, reality.

For a little over a decade we have been witnessing a profusion of discourses on autochthony - that is, an original belonging to a group or territory - in many parts of the world. A global approach to this question first requires a look at the principle of autochthony and its genealogy. Starting from African examples, places of prolific expression of the phenomenon, this article shows how autochthony plays the role of capital that can be invested, valued and profited from. The structure of this capital carries within itself the seeds of conflict. The article analyses how the stabilization of its value requires the execution of specific strategies. Among these strategies, I will focus in greater depth on voting. The relationship between capital, autochthony and elections will thus bring us back to debates that animate political science: in new municipalities, autochthony as capital is at the heart of candidate selection, suffrage, political participation and citizenship.

Reviewing the literature on the domain of virtual communities, this research finds that there is still an important gap in the scholarly understanding of how institutions influence online spaces of interaction. The theme of institutions has been marginal to most of the academic research in the domain of virtual communities, with few exceptions. This paper proposes that an institutional perspective would permit a better understanding on the whys of online behaviours and explores the potential contributions of such an approach.

The focus here is on seeking out alternative modes of knowledge production by using inter-comparisons within East Asia and the Third World to establish a mutual frame of reference. This special volume introducing Paik Nak-chung, Korea's foremost critical intellectual, is just such an effort. Paik has worked both to determine the relationship between the problems facing Koreans and global issues and to examine the possibilities for solidarity by reflecting upon the theoretical and practical struggles of Koreans from a global perspective. If one of the major tasks confronting Asia's critical intellectuals is 'to create other critical routes of globalization' (Cho and Chen 2005), it could be argued that Paik Nak-chung has already been engaged in this type of activity since the 1960s.

Post-colonial states in the Asian region have frequently been subject to political tensions derived from their multi-ethnic make-up and, what some have argued to be, the failure of states to adequately represent the interests of their ethnic minorities. This article will look at examples of where states in Asia have failed to adequately represent or otherwise incorporate their ethnic minorities as full and equal citizens. It also considers the range of responses to such perceived or actual state failure in adequately incorporating all citizens, including inter-ethnic and racial violence and separatist conflict. The article will conclude by considering conceptual and actual models of state organization intended to resolve racial and ethnic tensions in the Asian region.

The paper considers the virtualization of sovereignty today in the context of the Arctic debates. These are debates in which various parties, including the Government of Canada, First Nations groups, Inuit, international organizations, scholars, policy-makers and others, use the term sovereignty in diverse and at times divisive ways. We investigate several of the epistemological and ontological stakes of these discussions. We draw attention to the ways in which sovereignty as an abstract concept is actualized in the course of social and political disputes in the North in the twenty-first century.