Radio, politics and trust in Afghanistan

© 2002 SAGE PublicationsThis article examines the sociohistorical role of radio broadcasting in Afghanistan and analyses the interplay between the radio choices of the audience, political change and conflict. Though never explicitly trusted as a credible information source, the popularity of national radio in Afghanistan was critically weakened following the Communist revolution of 1978 and subsequent abuse of broadcasting under successive Afghan Communist regimes. Analysis highlights how the audience's thirst for unbiased information resulted in a substantial majority turning to the BBC World Service, this international service being perceived as a far more trustworthy and credible alternative. Discussion of the social history of Radio Afghanistan, the Taliban's Voice of Radio Shari'at and the BBC World Service serves to highlight the propagandist media machinery of the Communist era, the radical media policies of the Taliban regime and the value attributed to the BBC's current news reporting. In an example of the global becoming the local, the article concludes by examining how the BBC World Service has become the dominant radio broadcaster in Afghanistan and the extent to which this position is based on the quality of their outputs or their self-promotional discourses concerning impartiality.Andrew Skus

Not all is lost in translation: world varieties of cosmopolitanism

Of the many challenging issues facing cosmopolitan thought today a major one is the problem of conceptual and cultural translation since it is often the case that cosmopolitanism is highly relevant to developments in Indian and Chinese thought, even though the term itself is not used in the sources or in the interpretations. Indeed, the actual use of the term may itself disguise more relevant applications if acceptable forms of conceptual and cultural translation can be found. There is also the question of which register of meaning should be privileged, western explanatory concepts or non-western concepts or whether it is possible to find an alternative language. This methodological challenge is central to the concern of this paper. Three problems are addressed, namely universalist versus contextualist positions, Eurocentrism, and the problem of conceptual and cultural translations between western and non-western thought. The central argument is that cosmopolitanism thought needs to expand beyond its western genealogy to include other world traditions. However the solution is not simply to identify alternative cultural traditions to western ones and which might be the carrier of different kinds of cosmopolitan values, but of identifying in these different cultural traditions resources for cosmopolitics. In this way critical cosmopolitanism seeks to find an alternative both to strong contextualist as well as strong universalist positions. The upshot of this reasoning is that all world varieties of cosmopolitanism reflect different aspects of the cosmopolitan imagination which cannot be reduced to any one tradition

The sex ratio question and the unfolding of a moral panic? : Notions of power, choice and self in mate selection among women and men in higher education in China

Young adults have largely been absent in previous research on consequences of high sex ratios in China and few studies have zoomed in on those belonging to the higher strata of the population. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, this study investigates what implications sex ratio imbalance has for mate selection strategies and practices among young adults aged 19–24 in higher education in China. Being qualitative in nature, the chapter problematizes notions of power, choice and self in mate selection. The study finds that the sex ratio question has contributed to new social risk, and the fear of being leftover has unfolded into a moral panic. With universal marriage as a norm, both women and men studied fear being subject to a marriage squeeze. Contrary to the dyadic power thesis, the study finds that women in higher education did not experience an advantage in mate selection despite their shortage. Reasons for this include elaborate criteria for the ideal spouse, gendered dating scripts and confined social circles. The risk of being “leftover” further makes both young men and women as well as their parents aware of the remote consequences of choice, which may instigate intentions of early timing of marriage, as well as hypergamous norms, as further fuelled by the construction of the “utilitarian woman” in media and popular discourse. The chapter concludes that by being constantly reminded of the risk of being “leftover”, marriage as a norm is further intensified among young adults