Disentangling the ‘Native’ Guide

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences of nineteenth and early twentieth century Indigenous and Euroamerican men who worked as guides in the Adirondacks for urban, upper-class sportsmen. It also examines entanglements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Adirondackers in work and family contexts. The results create a complex understanding of the term ‘Native’ there as outsiders combined the two inhabitants to describe their wilderness vacation. This article argues that scholars who study the history of Indigenous societies should consider rural and urban culture alongside ethnicity, class and gender as important categories of analysis, especially in the nineteenth century and later.     

Inside the ‘blackboard jungle’

Abstract

The 1950s saw a wave of depictions of threatening male working-class adolescents in English novels, films and cartoons. However, these texts must be contextualised not only as part of the well-documented 1950s moral panic about youth but in relation to the popularized psychological concepts of the ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ child and the increasing implementation of progressive educational ideas that artificially limited working-class pupils’ horizons. This makes this period not only another reiteration of the perennial moral panics about the rising generation that Geoffrey Pearson has documented, but an emergence of a new way of conceptualizing youth.     

Wartime Holidays and the ‘Myth of the Blitz’

Published histories of the British home front during the Second World War, both academic and popular, say little or nothing about civilian holidays; the implication is that for most people they did not exist. This article disputes that reading. Complementing earlier work on officially sponsored ‘Holidays at Home’, the article first looks briefly at 1930s holiday expectations, then summarizes government measures to restrain ‘unnecessary’ wartime travel. Using rail-travel statistics, memoirs and diaries, contemporary novels, local press reports, Mass-Observation and other surveys it shows that throughout the war large numbers of people took holidays much as they had in peacetime. This apparent contradiction is then discussed in relation to, for instance, ideas of ‘normality’ and ‘wartime’, the survival of class in Britain, the wartime economy and the debate on the ‘myth of the blitz’ view of civilian behaviour.     

On the Chinese People’s Aesthetics

正Appreciation of art is not a birthright. In the prehistoric primitive society, the ancestors of the Chinese people rooted in the harsh natural environment of t...     

Beyond the ‘feminization of masculinity’: transforming patriarchy with the ‘feminine’ in contemporary Japanese youth culture

Contemporary Japanese society has seen the emergence of aesthetically conscious young men who employ ‘feminine’ aesthetics and strategies as ways of exploring and practising new masculine identities. In this paper, I explore the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways. This cultural trend is often described as the ‘feminization of masculinity,’ echoing the gendered articulation of rising mass culture in terms of the ‘feminization of culture,’ which acknowledges aspects of the commercialization of masculine bodies in Japan of the 1990s onward. While this view successfully links important issues, such as femininity, beauty, and the gendered representation of the self in a broader context of capitalist culture, it does not sufficiently convey a sense of agency in the young men's lively practices of exploring and expressing new masculine values and ideals. Rather than viewing ‘feminization’ simply as a sign of commodification, I argue that these young men strategically distance themselves from conventional masculinity by artificially standing in the position of the ‘feminine’, where they can more freely engage in the creation of alternative gender identities. From this point of view, the use of the phrase ‘feminization of masculinity’ often implies a fear and anxiety on the part of patriarchy over the boundary‐crossing practice that seriously challenges the stability of gendered cultural hegemony. Moreover, such anxiety driven reactions easily merge with nationalist inclination, as those threatened tend to seek the consolidation of patriarchal/hegemonic order by eliminating ambiguities and indeterminacy in cultural/national discourse. I conclude that the cultural hegemony of contemporary Japan could better sustain itself by incorporating non‐hegemonic gender identities, which would allow it maintain an open space for critical imagination and effectively diffuse an obsessive and ultimately self‐destructive desire for transparency/identity.     

The representation of ‘Asia’, ‘occupational forces’ and ‘women’ against the backdrop of post‐war Japanese culture: from the system of censorship to the present

This paper is one of the attempts to show how each East‐Asian regional country’s memory of the war has been related to the post‐war literatures and movies restricted by the structure of the Cold War. In particular, this paper takes up the issue of how the structure of Japanese culture after World War II was heavily influenced by the Cold War. When Japan was under the Occupational Forces, Japanese writers and film directors settling on the subject matter of the war were not free from the strain of the systematic censorship by GHQ. Translating into mechanisms of their works using the body or woman (comfort woman) by squarely facing the facts of the East‐Asian history, this paper reconsiders the body of post‐colonial Japan.     

What the ‘Third World’ means to me

Abstract

This essay offers an experience of how the author comes to understand the terms ‘Third World’ in a specific social, historical, and political context in Taiwan. For the author, his deepest understandings of the ‘Third World’ did not come from theoretical readings, but from several concrete personal experiences.     

‘Second death’, or revival of the ‘third world’ in the context of neo‐liberal globalization

Abstract

This paper tries to analyze the historical change in the Third World in its emergent stage, in the authoritarian stage and in the current democratic stage and, thereafter, find a way to revive the Bandung spirit in the current globalization context. I define the Bandung spirit as one of a ‘non‐aligned self‐helped “organization against” the dominant powerful countries’; that is, spirit of ‘anti‐predominance’. This spirit has emerged on the base of such domestic orientation and realities as economic self‐reliance, nationally integrated political regime, convergence of the state and civil society around anti‐colonialism. However, according to intensification of the Cold War confrontation on the international level and its centrifugal influence, the early Third World changed to a ‘new’ authoritarian Third World. The Third World in this stage could be characterized by an exclusive authoritarian political regime, dependent‐developmentalist economic orientation and coercively repressed and mobilized, in the top‐down way, civil society. This authoritarian Third World began to be confronted with a strong struggle from the bottom for democratization. In order for democratization of the Third World to become its true revival in the context of globalization, the following tasks should be considered. First, the democratic Third World should be a great driving force for the institutionalization of the transnational public regulatory mechanism. Second, the democratic Third World countries try to go over a kind of ‘transformed’ dependent development strategy. Third, democratization should go along with recovery of political inclusiveness and openness of the state to civil society’s demands. Thereafter, I tried to construct globalist re‐interpretation of the Bandung, by way of conceptualizing the current globalization as imperial globalization, unlike the imperialist globalization which the historical Bandung wanted to confront. I argue that the Bandung spirit of collective self‐help organizations against the newly emerging dominant order should be revived in this worse imperial globalization context. In addition, I argue that a nationalist resistance is also one component of the multiple resistances in the current imperial globalization.     

‘On British Felony the Sun Never Sets’

ABSTRACT

This article examines the narratives of three political prisoners transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land: the French-Canadian François-Xavier Prieur, the American Linus Miller, and the Irishman John Mitchel. It shows that the three ‘politicals’ sought to portray the suffering of political convicts as greater than that of the convict majority, from which they distanced themselves in terms of class, piety and honour. It also demonstrates how the three men critiqued the British Empire and the convict system in Australia, how they wrote (in some instances, re-wrote) their lives for their audience, and how they defined themselves in the convict colonies.     

‘We want everybody’s salvage!’: Recycling,Voluntarism, and the People’s War

ABSTRACT

This article reveals the role of volunteers in the British government’s campaign to increase recycling during the Second World War. It uses their experience to deconstuct the idea of a 'people's war', showing how this concept was invoked in several different ways. The article demonstrates that voluntary recycling schemes were led from the bottom-up, shifted the balance of power between private citizens and local authorities, and highlighted difference based on age, socio-economic status, gender, and geographical location. It concludes that official appeals may have invoked the ‘people’s war’, but the way that these messages were received was of most importance.     

Of Fighters and Frames: Femen’s Corporeality Between the Old,the New,the Yellow and the Blue

In this essay, we examine corporeality, its discursive framings and the salience of cultural contexts in the interpretation of embodied protest rhetoric on an example of originally Ukrainian and by now international feminist group Femen. We analyse the embodied rhetoric of Femen’s activism from various angles, with a special focus on the pivotal role of cultural locations in the interpretation of Femen’s embodied activism, in particular, and corporeal resistance, in general. With our findings, we hope to extend the existent knowledge on corporeal framing and politicalization of the body as a culture-specific site of resistance and social change.     

On Geoffrey Benjamin’s deep sociology of the nation-state

What is the unseen presence of the nation-state? What is so mystifying about the state of social theory that has effectively masked the nature of its cultural hegemony? At the time of his initial writing, Geoffrey Benjamin’s ruminations on these themes were novel and theoretically critical. Thirty years on, many of these conceptual mysteries remain unresolved. However, like the advent of governmentality, neo-liberalism and biopolitics, the omnipresence of national imagination and violence of state power still warrant problematization.     

Kim Ki Duk’s promise,Zanussi’s betrayal: film festival,world cinema and the subject of the region

This paper, focusing on the short film, Dear Kim (2009), and a debate between Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi and Marxist intellectual P. Govinda Pillai at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in 1998, attempts to understand the work done by the category of “world cinema” and the institution of the film festival in the formation of the subject of the region, in this case the south Indian state of Kerala. It focuses on the linguistic region formed in post-independence India, thought of as either mirroring or resisting the nation, and as a cultural resource necessary to inhabit the nation as a citizen. The paper argues for a conception of the subject of the region that is performative, where it negotiates multiple horizons of universality simultaneously. While the figure of the citizen provides it with one horizon of universality, the subject is not exhausted by it. In the case of Kerala, through the figuration of a conception of “world,” operationalized through the conduit of “world cinema,” often located in the institutional space of the film festival, the subject is able to access other horizons of universality, enabling it to transcend the particularities that a politics of location imposes on it.     

Let’s Go and See the Outside World!

Two decades ago, traveling abroadwas just a dream for most of Chinesepeople; only those with relatives livingabroad could go abroad in the name of“visiting relatives”. In 1988, Thailandbecame China’ first outbound traveldestination. Now, Chinese travelersappear at every corner of the world,wherever in Champs-Elysees in Paris,Colosseum in Rome, Pyramids in Egyptor the snow mountain in Swiss. I stillrecall that I was often asked if I wereJapanese when I traveled abroad a dozenof years a…     

The good,the bad and the advantageous: Migrants’ attitudes towards other migrants

There is a growing number of various ethnic groups in Finland. The attitudes and categorizations that host country nationals have and make regarding migrants is frequently researched. The attitudes that migrants have towards other migrants has, however, been much less researched. This paper provides an in-depth analysis that considers what factors are behind the attitudes that migrants form of other migrants and how these impact categorizations and hierarchies. The empirical research material of this study is based on 77 qualitative interviews with migrants living in Finland, carried out in 2018–2019. In the analysis, various theories of minority relations are applied.The research finds that migrants evaluate other migrants according to their perceived advantageousness and, based on these evaluations, they form hierarchies, which are to some extent ethnic. Perceived advantageousness is based on being integrated (especially in economic terms), hard-working, non-threatening, pliable, similar to Finns (or an ideal of perceived Finnishness), “white”, and not being dependent on welfare benefits. As a fear of being lumped together and then discriminated against, migrants emphasise their distinctiveness from other migrant groups in a subjugating manner. Certain characteristics tend to be ascribed to certain backgrounds and ethnicities and, thus, migrant groups become categorized according to their positions in a hierarchy. Not being advantageous is attributed to personal shortcomings and even ‘racial’ attributes. A shared commonness of the majority population is presumed and functions as the underlying assumption which guides the idea of how and what people should be like in order to fit in.     

Radio audience research: Challenging the ‘gold standard’

Since 1992, the BBC and the commercial radio sector have carried out radio audience research using a jointly agreed methodology ‐ one producing data that until recently enjoyed the status of a ‘gold standard’. In 2000, increasingly strident calls for this human recall methodology to be replaced by new, electronic forms of audience measurement led to the breakdown of a consensus that had served much of the industry well in concealing legitimate concerns about reliability and appropriateness.

This chapter sets current radio audience research in both historical and international contexts, and examines the recent controversy over different methodologies that apparently produce contrasting results. It uses data produced by a number of approaches to highlight inconsistencies that, if not resolved, may damage radio's credibility among advertisers, regulators and industry observers alike.

It describes the very public dispute that led to the formation of the breakaway Little Guys Radio Association by the former Sun editor, Kelvin MacKenzie ‐ and in response, research by Radio Joint Audience Research Ltd into competing systems of electronic measurement. In doing so, the chapter asks fundamental questions about what constitutes listening to the radio, and whether mere exposure ‐ if not legitimised by recall ‐ is sufficient to justify the industry's claims on the revenues it derives from licence fees and advertisers.     

‘The Charlatanry of the Learned’: On the Moral Economy of the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Germany

The notion of charlatanism is central to the social workings of the eighteenth-century republic of letters. Starting with Johann Burkhard Mencke's famous treatise The Charlatanry of the Learned, this paper traces how accusations of academic and scientific misconduct put in terms of ‘charlatanry’ initially helped to produce the new species of the erudite ‘charlatan’. Facing a growing complexity of scientific culture, this new frame of meaning, structured by numerous examples of scientific misconduct, offered a way of mapping the world of learning. But besides its cognitive impacts, the discourse of charlatanry allowed the creation of symbolic boundaries, which determined decisions as to the affiliation or non-affiliation to this recently forming scientific community by separating honourable from dishonourable scientific personae. Speaking of charlatanry therefore always implied a social distinction as much as a scientific one. The discourses on charlatanry also mirror differentiations within the scientific field. At first dominated by a critique built on courteous or bourgeois values, the scientific field later developed its own criteria of appraisal, such as authorship, originality, transparency, etc. Attracting the attention of a growing public sphere, the explicit verbalization of claims which were not related to the value system of a republic of letters primarily concerned with the production and distribution of knowledge finally led to a more implicit moral economy of science.     

The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia’

Abstract

The Muslim community in Sri Lanka has a pre-Islamic origin. Ethnically they are a mixed group, but changing political fortunes throughout the course of Sri Lankan history have made them realize that their identity lies in holding fast to the religion of Islam and not to any ethnic category. The current Sinhala-Tamil ethnic war has once again reinforced the need to hold on to the religious identity even more tightly. However, recent economic and political changes in the country and changes taking place in the Muslim world have injected new concerns for the community to worry about. The community is well and truly trapped in a political quagmire. This article highlights some aspects of this predicament.     

‘A Million Little Bonds’: Infidelity,Divorce and the Emotional Worlds of Marriage in British Women’s Magazines of the 1930s

This article examines infidelity discourse within women's magazines of the 1930s. Marking a departure from existing studies that have explored representations of ideal marriage, it uses discussions of marital breakdown as a lens through which to consider conceptualisations of love within marriage. It demonstrates how, in the interwar period, notions of mutual emotional investment were used to reinforce marriages that were deemed to be in breakdown. Muddying the perceived binary between individuals and the institution of marriage, this research highlights how the latter could be bolstered, rather than challenged, by recourse to the emotional worlds of spouses.