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Bamboo diplomacy, the latest conceptualization in Vietnamese foreign policy, has recently captured widespread media coverage. This study investigates the discursive legitimation strategies employed by the Vietnamese Communist Party to justify the adoption of the aforementioned policy. In addition, the study focuses on the integration of nationalism in the legitimation process of bamboo diplomacy discourse in the context of digital media. Drawing upon constructivism, banal nationalism, and Van Leeuwen's model of legitimation in discourse and communication, the study utilizes CDA and DHA to analyze 66 articles on six official Vietnamese online news outlets. The findings revealed that nationalism-based legitimacy is a key underpinning of three discursive strategies of the four implemented in the VCP's bamboo diplomacy discourse. Accordingly, three main patterns of nationhood reproduction were identified: (i) the myth of national history, (ii) the authority of national traditions, and (iii) the moralization of bamboo iconography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a poststructural approach to examine the relationship between the news media and international relations. It compares 15 years of international aid coverage from two donor nations, the United States and Britain, and two recipient nations, India and Pakistan, to understand the types of identities news media construct for a nation in relation to other nations. Despite their differences, the news discourse in all four nations has a neoliberal orientation. Moreover, neoliberalism underpins a hierarchical structure of relations that privileges some nations as superior and makes other nations willing participants in their own subordination. While scholars of press–state relations regard newsmaking as epiphenomenal to foreign policymaking, this article argues that newsmaking and policymaking are mutually constitutive social phenomena: both draw from and, in turn, reproduce a shared conception of national identity vis-à-vis other nations. In doing so, the article illustrates the productive power of news media in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism is often singled out as the powerful force that brought about the collapse of the last great land empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We offer a different picture: nationalism was weak before 1914, with war being caused by the fears of the great powers rather than pressures from below; crucially war was less an opportunity for pre-existing nationalists to seize than a maelstrom that created new identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations (IR) has long been criticized for taking a particular (Western) experience as basis for formulating theories with claim to universal validity. In response, recent discussions have therefore centered on making IR 'truly global', that is, more inclusive and less parochial in its language and substance. But the concept of the global underpinning this discussion is both illusive and strongly contested. It requires problematization. But how? In this Forum, scholars discuss this question with a forward-looking agenda. Building on recent critical engagements with the question of the global as a concept in general and Global IR specifically, the authors ask how the global should be problematized in order to achieve a (more) progressive agenda for IR. They draw on different regional and disciplinary perspectives to both further the agenda of a less exclusive and racist discipline without falling into the trap of shallow inclusivity, and to discuss ways of problematizing the global without falling back into nativism or nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian regimes are frequent targets of international pressure in the form of economic sanctions or threats thereof. Existing research shows that foreign interventions can carry several unintended consequences for politics and the economy in the targeted countries. One of the side effects of such interventions is boosting support for incumbent autocrats. Public demonstrations in support of embattled leaders are one aspect of this dynamic. This article investigates the link between foreign pressure and domestic mobilization in favor of ruling autocrats. It is argued that pressure simultaneously increases regime supporters' willingness to participate in rallies and the regime's demand to display and even overstate regime support. Foreign pressure facilitates mobilization as autocrats can fuel nationalist sentiments and frame foreign interventions as an attack on the nation as a whole. At the same time, rallies are a strategic tool to reduce political opportunities for the opposition and to signal resolve to the international community. Empirically, I conduct the first quantitative analysis that evidences the existence of a relationship between international pressure and mobilization in support of incumbent autocrats. Using monthly data on rally events in all authoritarian regimes between 2003 and 2015, I find that sanctions but also threats significantly increase pro-government mobilization. In addition, I show evidence for a moderating role of media freedom in the targeted state, highlighting the importance of how international events are portrayed in national news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines parallels between the resolidification of German identity and reconfigurations of German national space and nation-state time. From recurring events (refugee-guided tours) to temporary installations (a private home's garden memorial), these performances by and about those excluded or conditionally tolerated define an emerging refugee subjectivity. Each performance stages the dichotomy between transience and permanent residence and engages the public in perpetual enactments of democratic deliberation. We argue that these performances force audiences to recognize how they implicitly define their nations and fellow citizens by both their domestic democratic practices and the exceptions at the border: who is deported and kept out, who are permitted to enter and remain. With growing critical interest in performance and performativity in international relations, we consider the impact of individual and collective pro-migrant protest performances on national identity and electoral politics in Germany and their effects on organizing, resistance, and performance "artivism" globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary populist movements have inspired political pundits in various contexts to opine on the resurgence of victimhood culture, in which groups demonstrate heightened sensitivity to slights and attempt to evoke sympathy from third parties to their conflicts. Although reference to victimhood's politics oftentimes surfaces examples of egregious microaggressions, when victimhood claims are scaled up to the realm of nationalisms, oftentimes so too are their consequences. Current literature on victimhood in international politics, though, lacks a unifying theorisation suitable for the comparative analysis of victimhood nationalisms as important identities in the international arena. This gap prevents scholarship from investigating how the severity of perceived or real suffering relates to the formation of victimhood, as well as how victimhood nationalisms legitimize the projection of grievances onto third parties, potentially sowing new conflicts. This article theorises victimhood nationalism as a powerful identity narrative with two key constitutive elements. First, drawing on the narrative identity approach, it outlines how victimhood nationalisms are constructed via narrations of perceived or real collective trauma. Second, it argues that victimhood nationalist narratives, unlike other narratives of collective trauma, break down the idealized victim–perpetrator relationship and project grievances onto otherwise uninvolved international actors, including other nation-states. The article concludes by offering comparative case studies of Slobodan Milošević's and David Ben-Gurion's respective invocations of victimhood nationalism to illustrate the empirical applicability of this theorization, as well as victimhood nationalism's importance in international politics across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an English School framework for analysing the emergence of new primary institutions in global international society, and applies this to the case of environmental stewardship. The article traces the impact that global environmentalism has had on the normative order of global international society, examines the creation of secondary institutions around this norm and identifies the ways in which these developments have become embedded in the constitution and behaviour of states. It assesses the ways in which environmental stewardship has interacted with the other primary institutions that compose global international society, changing some of the understandings and practices associated with them. The conclusions argue that environmental stewardship is likely to be a durable institution of global international society, and that it might be a harbinger of a more functional turn in its priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tracks how political and intellectual leaders from south-eastern Europe used the concept of civilization, or a particular type of ‘civilization-speak’, from the end of the eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. It compares and contrasts how they employed civilization-speak in different linguistic milieus – French, Modern Greek, and Romanian – and how they deployed it to further changing political aims during a period of political upheaval in the Balkans. It traces how civilization-speak served initially as a tool for extracting support from west European, especially French, patrons, and was later refashioned into a rhetorical instrument of nationalism. This study places the intellectual and political history of south-eastern Europe during the era in a pan-European context and adds nuance to discussions about the development of nationalism in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Edward Said’s post-colonial framework to analyze India–United States (US) nuclear security relations in the post-Cold War period as a clash of US Orientalism and India’s nuclear sovereignty as a key marker of India’s post-colonial essence. Through an analysis of the discourses of India and the US with regard to India’s May 1998 detonation and the 123 Agreement, it explores the following questions: To what extent has America’s security relationship with India been characterized by Orientalist discourses? Does the revision of the US post-9/11 security relationship with India as evidenced through the 123 Agreement indicate continuity or change in America’s Orientalist discourses vis-à-vis the nuclear policies of the Indian state? How has this shaped India’s nuclear nationalism? In exploring these questions, it will be argued that US security discourses reflective of Orientalism have constructed India along Orientalist lines; have structured US security policies towards the nuclear strategies of the Indian state (thereby consolidating India’s nuclear nationalism); and, that the revision of the US security relationship with India post-9/11 shows a continuity of America’s Orientalism towards the Indian state and its nuclear program. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of Orientalism on South Asian security/International Relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on imagined communities has opened a multitude of explorations in how mass media construct and represent social identities in relation to nationalism. Depicting and at the same time creating social groups, media representations are permeated by questions of inclusion and exclusion. As a result, it is important to study media representations of social identities as strategic ideologies that debilitate or stabilize, support or condemn a specific identity discourse. In this study, we explore how Kurdish identity has been represented in Newroz TV, one of the most popular satellite TV channels among Iranian Kurds. Findings show that Kurdish nationalism is first defined in opposition to Persian, Arabic (as in Syria and Iraq) and Turkish national identity. However, the resulting images are permeated by partisan ideological divisions among Kurdish political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is soft power, and how can we analyse it empirically? The article proposes a social constructivist take on soft power by anchoring it to the concept of collective identity, and by suggesting a set of criteria that can be used to assess whether soft power is present in a relationship between two or more states. It argues that soft power is generated through continuous renegotiation of collective identity. We can assess the weight of a state’s soft power vis-a-vis another state by investigating the extent to which the discursively constructed collective identity projected by the first state is accepted or rejected by different audiences in the second state, and by examining the ability of these audiences to affect the process of foreign policy decision-making. To illustrate this approach, the article applies it to an analysis of Russia’s relationship with Ukraine prior to the 2014 crisis. In the late 2000s–early 2010s, Russia’s dominant identity was increasingly associated with the idea of a ‘Russian world’ — an imagined community based on the markers of the Russian language, the Russian culture and the common glorious past. Despite a significant increase in Moscow’s public diplomacy activities in Ukraine around that time, those efforts did not and could not fundamentally transform the psychological milieu in Moscow’s relationship with Kyiv because the projected identity was inherently incompatible with one of the main identity discourses in Ukraine and was only partially compatible with another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulrich Beck's quest to unshackle the social sciences from their methodological nationalism has yielded numerous influential concepts. In his last work he theorized the transformation of a globally connected world through the notion of 'metamorphosis' understood as a form of radical (paradigmatic) change. This transfiguration is driven by different perceptions of catastrophism, carrying the potential to re-shape world risk society. In this essay I critically assess what Beck refers to as 'emancipatory catastrophism'. I suggest substituting emancipatory with cosmopolitan catas-trophism. Cosmopolitan catastrophism seeks to adjoin an event-centered approach with a relational understanding of world risk society. By emphasizing cosmopolitan trajectories we avoid the linear fallacies plaguing earlier theories of modernity. Beck's iterative approach provides us with a heuristic tool, which addresses the ongoing interplay of universal scripts and local appropriations in the context of contingencies and uncertainties. Previously seen as residual, catastrophism becomes the center of our analytic efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Faking it: US Hegemony in a Post-Phallic Era" by Cynthia Weber is presented which focuses on the crisis in foreign relations between the U.S. and India based on issues of sex, gender and caste. Topics include arrest of former Indian Deputy Consul-General in New York, Devyani Khobragade on charges of visa fraud, Dalit caste identity of Khobragade and masculinity of India suffering humiliation of rape.

The term ‘abnormal’ has frequently been used to describe post-war Japan. Together with the idea that the country will, or should have to, ‘normalise’ its foreign and security policy, it has been reproduced in both academia and Japanese society. Why is Japan branded as ‘abnormal’, and from where does the desire to ‘normalise’ it come? Drawing on a relational concept of identity, and the distinction between norm and exception, this article argues that the ‘abnormality–normalisation nexus’ can be understood in terms of three identity-producing processes: (1) the process whereby the Japanese Self is socialised in US/‘Western’ norms, ultimately constructing it as an Other in the international system; (2) the process whereby the Japanese Self imagines itself as ‘legitimately exceptional’ (what is called ‘exceptionalisation’), but also ‘illegitimately abnormal’ — both of which are epitomised by Japan’s ‘pacifism’; and (3) the process whereby both the Self’s ‘negative abnormality’ and China/Asia are securitised in attempts to realise a more ‘normal’ (or super-normal) Japanese Self. How Japan is inter subjectively constructed on a scale between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ enables and constrains action. Although Japan has not remilitarised nearly as much in the 2000s as is often claimed, these processes might very well forebode an exceptional decision to become ‘normal’ and therefore more significant steps towards remilitarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study reconstructs the concept of interstate rivalry in accordance with a min–max strategy in order to determine the necessary characteristics of rivalry, provide a template with which to assess existing conceptualizations, and provide a means by which conceptualizations of rivalry can be formulated and operationalized. I argue that there are two necessary characteristics of a minimal conceptualization of interstate rivalry — temporal dependence and issue competition. Contextual conceptualizations are then formulated by adding dimensions, such as militarization, identification, and psychological hostility, among others, to the minimal definition. By defining interstate rivalry in its most extreme form (when all of the potential dimensions of rivalry are present in the fullest), I also establish a maximal or ‘ideal-type’ conceptualization. In adopting a min–max approach, this project seeks to unify conceptualizations of interstate rivalry along a common continuum in which the empirical coverage of cases decreases as properties are added to the minimal definition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following a poststructuralist theorising of identity in international relations, which argues that identity is relationally and discursively constructed through foreign policy, this article attempts to analyse the way in which the European Commission discursively constructs European identit(ies) in its relations with Turkey around the theme of ‘security’. The study utilises the methodological tools of critical discourse analysis in analysing the speeches and field interviews conducted with European Commission officials, in examining the way in which they construct ‘Europe’ in relation to the security implications of Turkish accession. The article’s findings challenge the argument that Europe is moving beyond the modern state to resemble a postmodern order, and problematises the designation of the Commission as a ‘cosmopolitan’ actor in EU enlargement policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article posits that a spatial discourse can be discerned in broadcasting and media policies in India that has framed nationalism, globalization, sovereignty, and citizenship. Through a range of spatial practices, India’s nation-state has historically elaborated two overlapping modalities of power: national sovereignty from 1947 to 1990, and governmentality since 1991. To understand the spatial discourses and the modalities of power we need to move beyond methodological nationalism: that is, explanations that treat state as a container and a fixed entity, where social relations are organized within territorially bounded national spaces. The article demonstrates that the spatial discourse of the state can be grasped through a transnational framework that considers national and international as part of the wider global field of relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For many postcolonial countries, articulating a sense of identity and cultural nationalism has involved negotiating those histories and identities constructed and ascribed upon them by others. Indeed, such themes have long troubled many postcolonial intellectuals and been the subject of intense debates. Shanghai Expo 2010 brought this issue into focus once again, an event where national identities were performed to an audience of 73 million. This article examines the objects and architecture of cultural nationalism in relation to questions of sovereignty and enduring colonialities for a number of Asian and African countries participating in previous world’s fairs and at Shanghai. It draws on the ideas of Partha Chatterjee to interpret why they embraced a language of tradition and heritage, reproducing the same geo-cultural hierarchies familiar to the age of European empire. The author argues that, within the cultural economies of globalization today, such countries engage in a form of auto-exoticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 15 years have seen an explosion of interest in the scholarship of E.H. Carr. As a founding figure of the realist approach to International Relations, as a philosopher of history and as a historian of the Soviet Union, Carr made important contributions. His work on the post-war political organisation of Europe has been somewhat neglected. While not going so far as to argue for the introduction of ‘another E.H. Carr’ – Carr the European integration theorist – this article argues that Carr’s specific brand of realism has much to say not only about the establishment, but also about the subsequent development, of the European Economic Community. Carr’s realism was, we argue, capable of understanding change in international society. This understanding was grounded in an appreciation of the role of power and morality in international politics and stands in sharp contrast to the emphasis on the structural factors that are prized by neorealists. While Carr’s vision of post-war Europe has not materialised in its entirety, it captures some of the crucial fault lines that animate the European project. Building a bridge between European integration studies and Carr’s realism will provide a fruitful avenue through which classical realism can once again begin to engage with developments in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Genocide is widely seen as a phenomenon of domestic politics, which becomes of international significance because it offends against international law. Hence there are as yet inadequate International Relations analyses of the production of genocide. This article challenges the idea of the domestic genesis of genocide, and critiques the corresponding approach of ‘comparative genocide studies’ which is dominant in the field. It analyses the emergence of more fruitful ‘relational’ and ‘international’ approaches in critical genocide studies, while identifying the limitations of their accounts of the ‘international system’. As first steps towards an adequate international account, the article then explores questions of the international meaning and construction of genocidal relations, and of international relations as the context of genocide. It argues for a historical and sociological approach to the international relations of genocide, and examines 20th-century European genocide in this light. Arguing for a broader conception of this historical experience than is suggested by an exclusive focus on the Holocaust, the article offers an interpretation of genocide as increasingly endemic and systemic in international relations in the first half of the century. It concludes by arguing that this account offers a starting point, but not a model, for analyses of genocide in global international relations in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paradigmatic case in which an almost permanent impasse exists in coming to terms with a difficult war past and ‘normalizing’ its international relations is that of Japan. Although successive Japanese governments have apologized over the last few decades, these have been countered by periodic episodes within Japan revolving largely around history textbooks, the remembrance of war dead and the quest by nationalists to restore national pride in the past. Regional relations were especially strained during the premiership of Koizumi Juni’chirô and his immediate successor, Abe Shinzô. They improved under Fukuda Yasuo, a moderate on war memory issues, and remained steady under Asô Tarô. Japan’s latest prime minister, Hatoyama Yukio, appears determined to address Japan’s war past more openly and critically than previous LDP figures, no doubt with an eye to improving Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbours. But whatever line he pursues, contestation over war memories will remain an issue. They are driven by deep divisions within Japan at the same time that political leaders seek a more prominent identity for Japan as a ‘normal’ actor in international affairs. This article analyses key aspects of the politics of Japan’s war memories, using insights from collective memory studies and constructivist IR theory. We suggest that the quest for ‘normality’ has generated a set of tensions and contradictions over the issue of war memories, both domestically and internationally, for which there is no resolution in sight. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neutral and alliance-free states continue to exist. Even though neutrality has lost its realistic survival function, it continues to serve as provider of national identity for neutral states. This identity is rooted in neutrality’s idealistic function, according to which neutral states used to engage for humanitarian issues and the reduction of violence in international relations. The argument developed suggests an extension of this traditional role concept of neutral states: they should engage as promoters of ideas in international peacebuilding which are contested because they are perceived as a threat to national sovereignty, such as the responsibility to protect (R2P). While neutrality’s realistic functions make neutral states credible advocates of sovereignty and autonomy, its idealistic functions provide them with a track record in positive reforms in international relations. Acting as norm entrepreneurs, neutral states could reduce the contradiction between ‘prevention’ and ‘intervention’. Therefore, the key argument of this article focuses on the basis of neutrality’s conceptual roots, the conditions for success of political ideas and examples from recent peacebuilding practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The least studied aspect of Ibero-American Independence is the impact on Spain and Portugal. Many complex issues were involved, including the nature of the economic impact, the degree of political readjustment, and the international position of the former metropoles. The 1820s exposed the contradictions in Iberian responses to the loss of continental American territories. Spanish merchants turned towards the domestic and Caribbean markets, and Portuguese policy shifted away from Brazil to the southern-African territories. Although the monarchy survived in both Spain and Portugal, each experienced dynastic convulsions of differing dimensions. The survival of empire beyond continental America complicated the development of European identities and of specifically Spanish and Portuguese national sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

National image is not only a channel to wield a state’s national power, but also an important national power resource. It has become critically important for China as it tries to rise in a relatively favorable international environment. Following a theoretical discussion on national image management in international relations and a historical review of China’s national image management, this article examines China’s strengths and weaknesses in its national image management. On the one hand, China’s national image benefits from its strong commitment to cultural diplomacy, effective employment of information and communication technologies in international broadcasting, and close connections with the Chinese diaspora around the world. On the other hand, China’s national image management is constrained by such hurdles as weak political credibility, reviving popular nationalism, and various missteps in its foreign policies. This study concludes that China’s national image management will remain an uphill battle in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Liberal internationalism is the default setting for thinking about the development of international institutions since 1919. It provides the template for practitioners whose job it is to juggle contending norms of power and justice, rights and responsibilities. For complex reasons, proponents of liberalism believe that the default needs to be reset -- their critics agree. Liberalism is in trouble because of the fragility of the inter-state order coupled to the challenge posed by rising, non-liberal powers. Closer to home, liberalism is in trouble because of a contestation over its specific liberal values. Contemporary liberal international theory understands this challenge in subtly different ways. For US-based internationalists, the crisis is one of authority; for English School internationalists, the problem with international order is that its institutions are 'deformed' because of a failure to legitimise power and institutions. Whether the crisis is on the legitimacy or authority side of the register, we argue that both internationalisms fail to adequately theorise world order in part because of their flawed characterisation of hierarchy and their related lack of attention to performances of social conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the standard narrative (e.g. Gellner) regarding the origins of modern nationalism in Europe, and Benedict Anderson's contrary suggestion that it first took shape in creole America, arguing instead that the formation of modern nationalism needs to be understood as a transatlantic process, in keeping with recent research on Atlantic history. More specifically, the North Atlantic dynamic of imperial competition between Britain and France, that led to the American and French Revolutions, is seen as the crucible of modern state formation, and it is argued that the North Atlantic needs to be understood not simply as a geographic space, but as a distinctive sphere of social and ideological interaction, given the centrality of sea-going during this period. It was this complex social environment, centred on a long18th century, that most provoked new imaginings of national community. Toward this end the article articulates the analytic concept of the 'interaction sphere'. With this it picks up on Charles Tilly's key concerns with how best to analyse large historical processes, and his emphasis on political competition and social interaction in explaining social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embarking on an outlook pertinent to the state of social fields in a global era, this article demonstrates the validity of the insight that rejects any strict bifurcation between localizing and globalizing tendencies in the maintenance of social life-worlds. By employing an appropriate term for the 'transgressive' nature of nationalistic imaginations and actions, 'transnationalism', it delves into qualitatively, but briefly analyzing the current status and futurity of, and the nature of the relationship that exists between, Ethiopianist and Oromo (a specific brand) nationalisms. The result is that neither of the two nationalisms seems to vanish amid the 'network society' of the new global era, nor, by implication, is the contention between them likely to recede (until and unless they undergo significant, internal qualitative transformations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines complex interactions of sport, nationalism and media in South Korea by questioning how mediated sporting events are (re)constituting nationalism. Analyses of media representations of three Olympics (1968, 1984 and 2000) in South Korean newspapers focus particularly on the country's changing political and economic circumstances. A contextual and historic approach to this data shows that sporting nationalism has been both fundamental and salient to these changes, and also suggests that it changes in response to contextual shifts. I conclude both that sporting nationalism in the media is a not a fixed or unilateral entity but rather flexible and multidimensional, and that its transformation is both constituted by and constitutive of general societal changes and the shifting status of nationalism in particular. Finally, this study supports the necessity of media studies on nationalism in sports, which will provide important clues for explicating the shifting status and roles of nationalism in the global era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contemporary practice of surgery in which bodies relate to nationalism. The author states that aesthetic surgeries can be interpreted as a method of fitting in and at the same time evoke the performative production of belonging. In addition, the nation is flagged on the skin to reiterate relationships of belonging that echo practical and conceptual links with property. The author emphasizes that flagging determines whether bodies can sink into the unmarked, habitual terrain.

Utilizing a Geertzian cultural systems approach, Australian newspaper reporting of the 2002 Bali bombing is analysed to explore the dynamics of collective memory during crisis. With Australian footballers among the casualties in the terrorist attack, the traditional heroic figure of the Australian sportsman was widely used as a symbolic frame through which journalists, politicians and social commentators rationalized national suffering.The resulting promotion of an insular Australian nationalism inflamed public hostility towards Indonesia about the treatment of Australia's dead and injured. A counter-narrative of the attack emerged, however, with Australian tourists in Bali being mythologically aligned with First World War Anzac soldiers. In keying the bombing into the cultural logics of contemporary global travel and post-Fordist consumption, this collective memory provided a 'model for' the emergence of a more cosmopolitan nationalism that legitimized a return to everyday activities and allowed for the development of closer diplomatic ties with Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between gender, nations and nationalisms vis-a-vis the Indian state's nationalist identity and perceptions of (in)security. It explores how the postcolonial Indian state's project of nation-building -- reflective of a western secular-modern identity (under the Congress Party) and a Hindutva-dominated identity (under the BJP) -- incorporates gender, with continuities and discontinuities, to articulate divergent forms of nationalist/communalist identities, 'cartographic anxieties' and nuclear (in)securities. The article contends that with the recent rise of the Hindu-Right BJP, guided by Hindutva ideology, the nature of representing the Indian nation, its women and (in)securities has changed from a geopolitical to a cultural perception -- thereby necessitating a rereading of the Indian nation, nationalism, gender and its perceptions of (in)security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of International Relations have often shied away from apprehending the historicity of modern nationalism. Inversely, theories of nationalism have not spent much time theorizing the inter-national. The analysis of the relationships among social relations, international orders and nationalism has fallen in the cracks between the field of IR and the field of comparative nationalism. In the context of a renewal of interest for the historical sociology of the international, the analysis of these relations remains of particular relevance. In this article, the author builds on Benno Teschke, Justin Rosenberg and Hannes Lacher's theorization of modern sovereignty, capitalism and the uneven and combined development of International Relations to recast the socio-historical conditions of emergence and diffusion of the modern national form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asserts that Antonio Gramsci's account of 'the international' linked to the rise of the modern capitalist states-system remains neglected within debates on the historical sociology of International Relations (IR). It does so by following two main axes of inquiry that assist the aim of unravelling Gramsci's relevance to understanding processes of state formation within the causal conditioning of 'the international'. The first axis focuses on Gramsci's historical research on Renaissance Italy and the role of mercantile capital in shaping late medieval and early modern states; the 'southern question' concerning the terms of uneven development of the Mezzogiorno in Italy; and the Italian Risorgimento understood as a passive revolution, or the reorganisation of state identity through the reproduction of capitalist property relations. These issues provide a historical backdrop to considering Gramsci's novel contribution to understanding the 'national' dimension as a point of arrival in understanding processes of capitalist expansion within 'the international' realm. This is pursued in the second axis through his account of the states-system and its relation to the emerging hegemony of Anglo-Saxon capitalism that detailed the European response of fascism to the growing intervention of foreign capital and the conditions of uneven development in terms of the specific contexts of the Russian Revolution and Woodrow Wilson's liberal internationalism. It is argued that a recognition of such, as specific instances of passive revolution, assists in providing an essential contribution to understanding 'the international' in conditioning state formation that has been absent from current debates in historical sociology in IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics that emerge from three different conceptions of the "inter": exchange, interest and identity. It argues that the classical focus on "distributive justice" in political analysis is too narrow since it excludes important issues such as noncognitive factors (loyalty) and inter-generational questions that are of particular importance to politics. It thus draws attention to the "particular" and (historically) contingent as defining characteristics of politics which have been marginalised by the contemporary emphasis on the "universal" in both epistemology and (analytical) ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With domestic political cultures in which the values of solidarity, equity and social justice figure large and a long history of internationalism in foreign policy, the Nordic states offer themselves as prototypical 'good international citizens'. Danish foreign policy long had a passive quality to it, nonetheless it has been broadly consistent with the Nordic internationalist tradition, especially with the adoption of 'active internationalism' after 1989. Since the 2001 Election of the first Fogh Rasmussen government, however, the ethico-political rationales underpinning Danish internationalism appear to be changing at the same time as Denmark has enacted a controversially much more restrictive and, critics argue, strongly culturally framed immigration and refugee policy. Although the Fogh Rasmussen governments have not abandoned internationalism, and key aspects of current Danish foreign policy resonate fully with the Nordic internationalist tradition, Denmark is now much more closely aligned with the US and the muscular internationalism that it promotes. It may now be the case that a normatively re-jigged internationalism helps to legitimate an overtly exclusionary Danish national narrative. Since the 'cartoon crisis', however, there are signs of a greater sensitivity to cultural politics in Danish foreign policy, but it remains moot whether this will flow through into the government's handling of the relationship between the peoples that comprise contemporary Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden's self-narrative is that of an outward-looking internationalist state whose commitments to justice and equality are not confined to co-nationals. What distinguishes Swedish internationalism, apart from being social democratically inspired, is that it rests on a thin conception of cosmopolitan duty that does not exclusively privilege the rights of Swedish nationals alone, but recognizes the need to extend social and political rights to non-nationals as well. Key here is the universality principle of the Nordic welfare model, which inspires policies that do not tend to discriminate on the basis of class or ethnic background. What is more, this way of thinking has not generally been confined to the domestic level, but can be traced through to Sweden's (and the other Nordic states') distinctive foreign policy traditions. This article examines the inter-connection between domestic and international welfare commitments in the Swedish context. The key thesis developed here is that states that promote the values of solidarity, inclusiveness and universal welfare at the national level are also more likely to do so beyond borders. The article deconstructs the endogenously framed ideational factors that underpin Swedish internationalism, with particular focus on social democracy in the process. It also investigates the co- constitutive relationship between Sweden's domestic and international welfare commitments by exploring contemporary discourses and practices that make up a significant part of Sweden's self-identity. Finally, it analyses the normative relevance of a social democratically inspired Swedish internationalism for the future of Nordic internationalism more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the modern state and the European states system limned the inside of a state different from its outside. Inside the state, peace and progress could be furthered by means of disciplinary power, while outside the state, anarchy reigned. Academic disciplines such as political theory, International Relations and International History treat this divide as foundational, and so the knowledge they produce contributes to its reproduction. The article traces the emergence of the divide where Norway and Denmark are concerned through a reading of the concept of 'realm' (rike), and asks when Norway evolved a foreign policy (as distinct from a non-discriminating foreign/domestic one). There are two extant views. A legal view starts from sovereignty and fixes the date at 1905, whereas a nationalistic view popular with historians treats it as originary to the political entity of Norway, which means that it may be dated back some thousand years or so. Treating discriminating institutions such as foreign ministries as preconditions for the existence of a permanent divide between inside and outside, the article suggests the end of the eighteenth century. One may speculate that the firming of the divide is related to the rise of nationalism, in which case it is not surprising that the two phenomena fade concurrently. Since Nordic cooperation stood out as a special phenomenon in international relations because of the particular way in which it handled the domestic/foreign divide, Nordic cooperation will lose its role as special in the degree to which the domestic/foreign divide becomes less foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the modern state and the European states system limned the inside of a state different from its outside. Inside the state, peace and progress could be furthered by means of disciplinary power, while outside the state, anarchy reigned. Academic disciplines such as political theory, International Relations and International History treat this divide as foundational, and so the knowledge they produce contributes to its reproduction. The article traces the emergence of the divide where Norway and Denmark are concerned through a reading of the concept of 'realm' (rike), and asks when Norway evolved a foreign policy (as distinct from a non-discriminating foreign/domestic one). There are two extant views. A legal view starts from sovereignty and fixes the date at 1905, whereas a nationalistic view popular with historians treats it as originary to the political entity of Norway, which means that it may be dated back some thousand years or so. Treating discriminating institutions such as foreign ministries as preconditions for the existence of a permanent divide between inside and outside, the article suggests the end of the eighteenth century. One may speculate that the firming of the divide is related to the rise of nationalism, in which case it is not surprising that the two phenomena fade concurrently. Since Nordic cooperation stood out as a special phenomenon in international relations because of the particular way in which it handled the domestic/foreign divide, Nordic cooperation will lose its role as special in the degree to which the domestic/foreign divide becomes less foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is two-pronged. First, it seeks to identify the factors that seem to lower trust in the USA among South Koreans. These factors weaken the traditionally solid Korea—USA alliance and have led a US expert to call South Korea a "runaway ally." Second, this article empirically tests various explanations of trust using a nationwide survey of South Koreans conducted in 2005. This article employs multiple regression analysis to test the hypothesized relation- ships. The results indicate that the following factors have a statistically significant impact on trust in the USA: ideological anti-Americanism, short- and long-term factors related to the activities of Americans or the USA, national self-esteem, and American pop culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of global Jihadist terrorism was brutally announced in the 2002 Bali bombings. The attacks marked a significant moment in the relationship between Australia and Bali. The bewilderment characterizing Balinese and Australian responses to the 2002 bombings is linked to processes of globalization and the `de-bordering' of knowledge, most particularly as it resonates through locally constituted `ideology', beliefs and identity. While for the Bali Hindu communities this cultural expressivity is located in Vedic mythology, rituals and principles, for many Australians it appears to be associated with various forms of political ideology and `nationalism'. It is unsurprising that Australia's first commemoration of the bombing was iterated through a profound grief, rendered more acute by nationalism and national pride. It heroized the victims through the heroization of nation; the assailants were motivated by a desire not merely to destroy Australians and Australia but the very basis of the modern nation itself - freedom, democracy, justice and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the politics of home, homeland and homepage on what it calls the ‘Indian-American’ web. It demonstrates how the Indian-American web emerged during the 1990s by targeting non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs) in the United States. NRI refers to an Indian citizen who resides outside India, while PlO refers to a foreign citizen who claims an ‘Indian’ origin. The central argument of the article is that the web disrupts hegemonic notions of NRI and PlO identities by articulating diverse imaginations of ‘home’, such as household, homeland and homepage, to the cultural, economic and political discourses of nation, family and community. In the process, the web foregrounds the contestations over ‘old’ and ‘new’ identities within the NRI and PlO communities in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the online representations of the identity politics discourse of the elite Hindu nationalist community and the subaltern Dalit community. The assumptions underlying assertions about Hindu and Dalit identity on select Hindu nationalist and Dalit websites are remarkably similar despite deep ideological differences between the two. Developments in the Indian technological and cultural fields in the 1990s have enabled the emergence of a new mode of representing collective identity (‘global primordiality‘), which explains the resemblance between online Hindu nationalist and online Dalit discourse. The logic of global primordiality typically finds expression in cyberspace, where the realms of technology and culture intersect. The representational framework of global primordiality is shaped primarily by Hindu nationalists who also occupy a privileged position as elites in the Indian technological field. In its participation in cyberspace, Dalit discourse may tend to mirror this dominant mode of online representation, even as it remains opposed to Hindu nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modernity, the concept of cosmopolitanism has changed from an intellectual ethos to a vision of an institutionally embedded global political consciousness. The central problem that troubles cosmopolitanism from its moment of inception in 18th-century philosophy to the globalized present is whether we live in a world that is interconnected enough to generate institutions that have a global regulatory reach and a global form of solidarity that can influence their functioning. Examination of Kant's pre-nationalist cosmopolitanism, Marx's postnationalist cosmopolitanism, and decolonizing socialist nationalism indicates the normative attraction of the nation as a mode of solidarity. Contemporary arguments about new cosmopolitanisms focusing on the rise of transnational networks of global cities, postnational social formations created by migrant and diasporic flows and Habermas's recent revival of Kant's project of cosmopolitan democracy have likewise failed to address the persistence of nationalism as a normative force within the field of uneven globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of an overarching narrative of place for Northern Ireland, and its territorial conflict, have resulted in fragmented, highly localized and strictly bounded senses of place. This is nowhere more evident than in Belfast, a city profoundly shaped by its sectarian geographies. As a result, what theorists have come to characterize as the relative liberty of urban space is overtly compromised, with movement through and within Belfast being restricted by the policing of its internal boundaries. These difficulties, and their gendered effects, are focused here in relation to the particular experience of artist Sandra Johnston. Johnston made two performative pieces in response and resistance to the spatial constraint she had undergone on the Lower Newtownards Road, a loyalist area of East Belfast. Johnston disrupts the performance of order and control evident in Belfast's politico-religious territories, and offers a radically alternative negotiation of space, which I argue is personally, communally and politically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning from the apocalyptic work, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, this article explores the Christian Apocalypse through dream-reading the imagery in the context of American responses to 9/11. The apocalyptic figures of the Whore, the Messiah and the Beast appear in interaction with each other. Apocalyptic language, like the tension between nationalism and globalization, both deterritorializes and reterritorializes, unleashing the total destructive power of Armageddon on whole populations through war or torture, legitimized through the notions of absolute good and evil. The article ends with 'Earth Dreams', an attempt to deconstruct apocalyptic ideas with a theopolitics of 'just love'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on nationalism and the party politics of decolonization in Kenya from 1955 to 1964. History of Kenyan politics; Description of the policy of "majimboism"; History of the Kenya African National Union and the Kenya African Democratic Union.

Cogitates on the denigration and misrepresentation of pan-Arab nationalism. Portrayal of Saddam Hussein's regime as exceptionally heinous, threatening and a major source of terrorism; Justification of the current Middle Eastern policy imposed by the U.S.; Analysis to the fallacies that inform reductionist and hostile approaches to pan-Arabism.

This article explores the extent to which it makes sense to see EU policies towards the developing world as distinctive. It does so through a comparative analysis of EU and US policies for the governance of Latin America, paying particular attention to Mercosur. The conceptual framework is drawn from theories of new regionalism. Despite some similarities in so far as issues of economic governance are concerned, I argue that there are important differences between the EU and the US models of new regionalism, especially in terms of the discursive importance attributed to notions of `partnership', support for subregional integration, and political and social inclusion. I suggest that the EU is using new regionalism as a way to lay down an identity marker of what it perceives as a more humane governance model for Latin America than that of the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provoked by recent developments in Denmark (and also other European countries), I consider the construction and reconstruction of territorial (national and transnational) identities in the 'new' Europe to be a question of exceptional ethical and political importance. Therefore, the paper concentrates upon this issue and discusses the construction and re-negotiation of (trans)national identities as a multi-scalar process of 'othering'. Specific attention is drawn to current discourses of 'neo-nationalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]