Popular culture and politics: re-narrating the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute

Narrative, we argue, can (re)construct social reality. Alternative imaginaries of ‘being in the world’ can lead to alternative ways of ‘doing in the world’. We discuss the current dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as an example. Westphalian logic would have the two countries come to blows, if not go to war, over the Islands. The Westphalian account of the dispute centres on the key principle of sovereignty. But what if we utilized a different imaginary to re-narrate the conflict? We turn to popular culture in both Japan and China as a guide, and juxtapose two anime, Appleseed and Time of Eve, with one Chinese TV drama, Nirvana in Fire. Each of these upends conventional analyses of the Islands dispute and offers alternative conceptions of sovereignty. We conclude by considering the implications of such alternative imaginaries for the study, if not practice, of international relations.Asian Studie

Relating self and other in Chinese and Western thought

Recent debates in International Relations seek to decolonise the discipline by focusing on relationality between self and other. This article examines the possibilities for preserving a particular type of otherness: ‘radical otherness’ or ‘alterity’. Such otherness can provide a bulwark against domination and colonialism: there is always something truly other which cannot be assimilated. However, two problems arise. First, if otherness is truly inaccessible, how can self relate to it? Does otherness undermine relationality? Second, can we talk about otherness without making it the same? Is the very naming of otherness a new form of domination? This article draws out and explores the possibilities for radical otherness in Sinophone and Anglophone relational theorising. It addresses the difficulties presented by the need for a sense of radical otherness on the one hand, and the seeming impossibility of either detecting it, or relating to it, on the other. By constructing a typology of four accounts of otherness, it finds that the identification and preservation of radical otherness poses significant problems for relationality. Radical otherness makes relationality between self and other impossible, but without radical otherness there is a danger of domination and assimilation. This is common to both Sinophone and Anglophone endeavours

The securityness of secularism? The case of Turkey

Secularism is frequently portrayed as a security referent in present-day Turkey. But, what is it that makes secularism a security issue? Where are we to locate the 'securityness' of secularism? Against prevailing accounts that privilege the domestic dimension, this article argues that the securityness of secularism in Turkey should be located in both the domestic and the international. This is not to suggest that secularism can be reduced to security, but it is to suggest that efforts to portray Turkey's secularism merely as a constitutive principle and an outcome of the project of Republican transformation, or as a means of safeguarding a particular vision of transformation through controlling religion, or as an instrument of national economic development, while rewarding in themselves, nevertheless miss an important set of dynamics that help to explain secularism's centrality to Turkey's politics. The article locates this latter set of dynamics in the international realm and ultimately proffers the argument that secularism was in part a response to European/international society's ambivalence towards Turkey's 'difference' and the insecurities this entailed. The conclusion suggests that the present-day centrality of secularism in Turkey's politics and the apparent securityness of such centrality could be considered as a response to particular remembrances of the past and interpretations of the present vis-̀-vis such ambivalence. © 2008 Sage Publications

Hobson’s Eurocentric World Politics: The Journey Begins

Hobson gives us a definitive accounting of Eurocentrism in IR. The only missing element is gender. Race needs gender to work, I argue. Otherwise, race serves as a mere descriptor. </jats:p

Beyond Soft Power

The concept of ‘soft power’ impoverishes our understanding of politics. It assumes (i) the world has never encountered instances of ‘soft power’ before or knows no better when encountering it; (ii) culture cannot have any interests, agency or impact of its own; and (iii) it cannot capture the state. History—especially from India and China—debunks these assumptions. I propose a contrasting concept, cultural power. It turns ‘soft power’ on its head by (i) articulating the state as ontology, not instrument; accordingly, (ii) culture can generate its own centre (or centres) of gravitas that (iii) invariably outstrips the state in purpose and identity. To demonstrate, I draw on recent filmic representations from India and China. These replay the power of historical culture, like Hindu reincarnation and/or Confucian love, through a contemporary venue. I conclude with some implications of cultural power for politics, in general, and world politics, in particular. </jats:p