journal article
Download Only Collection
Home
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.725512pmid: N/A
This paper uses the 2011 viral video “My Tram Experience” as a prism through which to consider aspects of the contemporary politics of race and racism, immigration and misoxeny in Britain. The release and popularity of that clip is seen in the context of the second trial of the murders of Stephen Lawrence and in relation to technological changes and the emergence of virtual and immaterial racism on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.718714pmid: N/A
The narrative that links the migrant rights movements with the formation of multiculturalism is now well known. There is still much to debate on the centrality of social justice in multicultural discourse and the dynamic versus static view of cultural representation. In this article, I aim to revisit some of the reflections by founding figures in Australian multiculturalism with the purpose of examining the cultural horizons that framed their motivation and aspiration. It is my contention that among many of these figures, there was not only a desire to see a more just society in which the welfare service, political rights and economic opportunities for migrants were developed in a more responsive manner, or what we may call activist multiculturalism, but there was also an implicit world view that was not only focused on securing more rights for minorities and gaining support of marginalised ethno-specific communities, but also committed to a wider sense of diversity. This article will explore the aesthetic dimensions that relate to the rather vague and often abstract sentiments that were expressed towards cultural diversity, but were also expressive of different multicultural perspectives.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.699878pmid: N/A
A look at what recent debates over Mexican-American and ethnic studies in Arizona reveals about racial dynamics in the American academy and beyond. Author argues that academics have much to learn from activists challenging the current ban on ethnic studies.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.717895pmid: N/A
Recent changes to immigration and registration laws represent a profound shift in official imaginings of the relationship between Japanese and non-Japanese residents point to the possibility of real change occuring in the way that with those with different nationalities/ethnicities live together in the same physical and cultural space here in Japan. In this paper, I focus on and offer an interpretation of these changes in the light of hitherto less inclusive positioning of ethnic minorities. I will consider their likely impact on the identities of both minorities and the majority Yamato Japanese. I will argue that in the context of a shift away from the dominant post-war discourse of homogeneous nation to multicultural coexistence society, a space is opening up for greater acceptance of, and thus freedom to express, difference in Japan. Yet there are also moves towards an ever harsher position on undocumented migrants and greater centralised control of all foreign residents.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.721345pmid: N/A
As military occupation increasingly informs the politics of both democracies and dictatorships, capitalist and socialist regimes, this essay asks why it is foundational for sovereignty and the post-war state-form. In particular, it questions the complicity of post-colonial theory with security discourses in reading movements for self-determination as threats to the state or as forms of terrorism rather than as alternate possibilities for freedom and liberty. It suggests not only that the ongoing twenty-first century relations between occupier and occupied reprise the racialised forms of identity that characterised relations between coloniser and colonised in the preceding two centuries, but also that relations between occupied peoples may produce affiliative poetics and shared terms of political reference or solidarity.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.735617pmid: N/A
How can we conceive of global studies of culture and power without (i) overlooking the parameters of the nation state as a forceful axis of power, (ii) prioritising the West as the fount of energised political directives and (iii) reinforcing neo-liberal assumptions on culture and subjectivities? With a reappraisal of theories of globalisation, I elaborate on a transverse politics for transnational studies. I suggest that the national need be foregrounded in any appraisal of the power-laden axes in the co-constitution of the local and the global. Too often, the ‘national’ is all too easily contracted into the ‘local’. I also revisit earlier works to propose multi-sited, engaged and transversal studies that do not simply follow and track global flows but question and undermine their hegemonic trails.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.710550pmid: N/A
This article explores the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change. Research on gendered vulnerabilities to disasters suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought. This is because of their relative poverty, economic activities (especially subsistence agriculture) and the moral economies governing women's modesty in many cultures. Research on historical and contemporary links between masculinity and the military in environmental politics, polar research and large-scale strategies for managing risk, including from climate change, suggests that men and their perspectives have more influence over climate change policies because of their historical domination of science and government. I expect that masculinist identities, cultures and militarised institutions will tend to favour large-scale remedies, such as geoengineering, minimise mitigation strategies, such as reducing energy use, and emphasise ‘security’ problems of global climate change.
doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.718713pmid: N/A
Elites have changed. They are now more open and meritocratic. They are also the engines of inequality. In this article, I argue that elites have embraced the rhetoric of the rights movements of the past decades, becoming champions of the notion that it is individual capacities that matter, not ascriptive characteristics. This stance embraces a new efficiency of our world, that of the market. The earnest deployment of these ideas by the elite has resulted in a world with less equality, less mobility and a more empowered elite. I reflect on how this came to be, and how such elite identities might be challenged in the service of the public welfare.
Showing 1 to 10 of 17 Articles