Textualizing cultures: thinking beyond the MIT controversy

This essay examines how the MIT Controversy hardened identities in terms of the timeworn template of geopolitical conflict of national stereotypes. It critically analyzes the Chinese students’ response to the “Visualizing Cultures” project by putting it in the context of the PRC’s patriotic education policy that securitizes culture by focusing on identity as difference in a zero-sum game that distinguishes civilization from barbarism, and China from the rest of the world. It critically analyzes the professors response to the controversy by highlighting how meaning is not only produced by the author; it is also consumed by various audiences that bring diverse sets of experiences into meaning making. It concludes that the controversy is less about content, and more about who controls knowledge production and distribution

The politics of walls: barriers, flows, and the sublime

As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign showed, walls are a hot topic. While ‘globalisation’, with its free flow of capital and goods, characterised world politics after the end of the Cold War, the twenty-first century has witnessed a reassertion of cultural, legal, and physical barriers. It is common to criticise such post-Cold War walls, especially the US-Mexico Barrier and Israel’s West Bank Barrier, as ineffective and immoral. This article problematises such critical discourse by using unlikely juxtapositions (the Great Wall of China) and new conceptual frameworks (gaps, critical aesthetics) to explore: (1) how walls can be a rational security policy; (2) how they are not simply barriers, but can be complex sites of flows; and (3) how walls are not simply texts waiting to be decoded: they are also sites of non-narrative affective experience that can even excite the sublime. This critical juxtaposition of walls first explores what they can tell us about the politics of borders, identity, and foreign policy, and then considers how walls, as concrete visual artefacts, can be examples not simply of ideology, but also of affect. The article aims to understand walls in a different register as active embodiments of political debate – and of political resistanc

Moralidad católica y cambio económico

Este artículo explica las corrientes eclesiásticas de crítica basada en cuestiones morales hacia la política económica auspiciada por la burocracia borbónica de la Monarquía Hispánica a lo largo del siglo XVIII.Aquest article exposa el desenvolupament dels corrents eclesiàstics de crítica moral envers la política econòmica auspiciada per la burocràcia borbònica de la Monarquia Hispànica al llarg del segle XVIII.This article expounds the evolution of an ecclesiastic critical thought based on morals and referred to the economic policy sponsored by the Bourbon bureaucracy in the Spanish Monarchy during the eighteenth century

Identity and security in China: the negative soft power of the China dream

Joseph Nye concentrates on the positive attractive aspects of soft power as a foreign policy tool. This article will argue that the Chinese discussion of soft power is interesting because it does the opposite: soft power is negative rather than positive, and is employed as a tool in domestic policy more than in foreign affairs. It will use Chinese President Xi Jinping's new ‘China Dream’ discourse to explore China's ‘negative soft power’ strategy. Rather than take for granted that we understand what the ‘Chinese values’ are that inform the PRC's soft power, it argues that soft power discourse is a useful heuristic device for understanding how Chinese policy makers and public intellectuals are actively constructing a ‘China’ and a ‘world’ to promote regime legitimacy. The Chinese case thus suggests that we need a more complex view of power that considers the contingent dynamics of its hard/soft, positive/negative, foreign/domestic aspects

Review: \u3ci\u3eChina’s Megatrends: The Eight Pillars of a New Society\u3c/i\u3e

The future is a hot topic in China; bookstores are full of tomes asserting the 21st century as China’s century: Liu Mingfu’s The China Dream(2010) and Chan Koon-chung’s The Gilded Era: China 2013 (2009) are but two of the most recent books that describe how China is destined to become the number one country in the world

An Update on Solid Grass Biomass Fuels in Vermont

This report documents recent testing involving the densification and combustion of solid, grass biomass fuels in a small commercial boiler (342,100 BTU/hr output rating). Fuel briquettes (or “pucks”) were made from Switchgrass, Miscanthus, Reed Canary, MulchHay and “Ag Biomass” / Field Residue as well as mixtures of these feedstocks with ground wood chips. Our findings were: 1.On-farm, small scale densification of grass and agricultural biomass solid fuels via pucking is feasible with a conversion (densification) cost of $49-148 per ton anda finished fuel cost in the range of$85-228 per ton ($5.2 –14.4 per million BTU). 2.Sustained, reliable combustion of densified grass and agricultural biomass solid fuels in a light commercial boiler (EvoWorld HC100 Eco) is feasible with 73-903.The test of the Ag Biomass / Field Residue fuel demonstrated feasibility at a current delivered price of$214 per ton($13.2per million BTU) supporting a potential payback period of 3.6 years on the boiler. At higher production volume projects a path to$85 per ton ($5.2per million BTU)and a potential payback period of 2.4 years

Chinese global orders: socialism, tradition, and nation in China-Russia relations

While many use rational IR theory to explain Chinese foreign policy behavior, this paper follows global IR to employ interpretivist theory to examine how Chinese elites understand their country's role in the world. In particular, it explores the Chinese global order ideas of socialism, tradition, and nation through a comparative analysis of how they work in China-Russia relations, especially after China's 20th Communist Party Congress in 2022. The first section presents a critical analysis of the realist understanding of the China-Russia-U.S. strategic triangle. It argues that the socialist concept of "united front work"better explains Chinese (and Russian) policy in terms of short-term "tactical triangles."To probe China's long-term global order ideas, the second section explores narratives of tradition to examine the concentric circles model of global order seen in Chinese tianxia and Russian Eurasianism. To understand these competing Russocentric and Sinocentric global orders, the third section explores how each country's official historiography highlights narratives of the nation and especially how national rejuvenation requires correcting the "national humiliation"of lost territories. Rather than see these narratives in a linear chronological history - i.e., from tradition to socialism to nationalism - this paper considers how they overlap in socialism, tradition, and nation, a non-linear dynamic triad of global order ideas. It concludes first that further research is necessary to examine the interrelation of these three narratives: while nation and tradition are often employed to support the overarching narrative of socialism in recent years, this could certainly change. The conclusion then argues that while these narratives may be coherent theoretically, they have not been very successful in achieving Beijing and Moscow's foreign policy objectives

Sino-speak: Chinese exceptionalism and the politics of history

This article examines how recent books by academics and public intellectuals are reshaping the discourse of the rise of China. While earlier trends argued that China was being socialized into the norms of international society, many texts now proclaim that due to its unique civilization, China will follow its own path to modernity. Such books thus look to the past—China's imperial history—for clues to not only China's future, but also the world's future. This discourse, which could be called “Sino-speak,” presents an essentialized Chinese civilization that is culturally determined to rule Asia, if not the world. The article notes that nuanced readings of China's historical relations with its East Asian neighbors provide a critical entry into a more sophisticated analysis of popular declarations of “Chinese exceptionalism.” But it concludes that this critical analysis is largely overwhelmed by the wave of Sino-speak.</jats:p