Passing on Political Information between Major Powers: The Key Role of Ambassadors between Byzantium and some of its Neighbours

Ambassadors and embassies were numerous between Byzantium and its Muslim and Western Christian neighbours during the Middle Byzantine Period. This article seeks to demonstrate that these official envoys constituted major players involved in the transfer of political information between the courts considered. Ambassadors were those who travelled the most in the Mediterranean area during our period – at least between 700 and 900. Furthermore, as official envoys acting for sovereigns, they were carefully listened to by those sovereigns when they returned. Information coming from ambassadors is found in various sources and concerned military matters and foreign policy. But we also find precise data on domestic affairs and internal political information. Furthermore, news of usurpations and troubles in Byzantium may have constituted an important part of the information transferred beyond the Empire. Foreign ambassadors witnessed usurpations and palace revolutions. Their testimonies could have nourished the idea of a Byzantine government weakened by political instability and this theme became prominent during the twelfth century in some Western Christian courts.     

The political socialization of youth in a post-conflict community

Political socialization affects the development of young people's attitudes in post-conflict societies. Political socialization may support a movement toward positive intergroup relations, or it may influence the perpetuation of intergroup tensions and divisions. In the context of Vukovar, Croatia, political socialization, for youth growing up in a post-conflict community, involves learning about social relations, including relational power and group status within a multi-ethnic community. The current study examines experiences of political socialization in this context. Qualitative data from ten focus groups, conducted among 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds, mothers, and fathers of Serb and Croat ethnicity, are analyzed using the constant comparative method. Results indicate a belief in the importance of parents, peers, schools, and the media in the development of youth's political orientations, specifically related to intergroup relations. These attitudes are reflected in the lived realities of youth as political actors through their opinions toward intergroup interactions, their experiences of intergroup contact and conflict, and their beliefs about and recommendations for integrated education. Although some avoided any discussion of war, focus group participants’ predominant perspective reflected beliefs that the political socialization of youth operated to preserve intergroup tensions and division in Vukovar. The paper concludes with a number of policy and intervention implications.     

“Our” Criminals—Israeli Press Coverage of Domestic Political Criminals

The study examined media coverage of Israeli citizens convicted of committing political crimes against the state in order to determine how the media portrays such perpetrators, ultimately to discern what these framing choices suggest about citizens involved in political crimes. In contrast to external acts of political crime for which the explanation provided by the media is clear, mainly that the perpetrator, “the other,” is evil and acting against “us,” this study found that when the perpetrator is “one of us” there is a profound need in the media to find a multidimensional explanation for the act. This study found that the Israeli media applies a personalized news frame to portray each of “our” criminals differently and explain their motivations to the public.     

Performing Bandung: China’s dance diplomacy with India,Indonesia, and Burma, 1953–1962

While dance was a common element of international diplomacy activities around the world during the 1950s and early 1960s, scholars have only recently begun to focus attention on this topic, especially as it concerns relationships forged beyond those of the Cold War superpowers. Using previously unexamined historical materials such as rare photographs and performance programs, dancer biographies, autobiographies and personal interviews, unpublished institutional histories, and contemporary periodicals, this article demonstrates not only that dance was an integral part of China’s inter-Asian cultural exchange between 1953 and 1962, but also that the PRC developed a distinct approach to dance diplomacy. Through a series of exchanges with India, Indonesia and Burma, China’s foreign ministers and dancers developed and refined a method of dance diplomacy in which the primary goal was to learn from, rather than export to, these neighboring countries. This approach harnessed the affective power of embodied aesthetic culture to literally “perform” Bandung ideals, namely, cooperation and mutual respect among Asian nations and an anti-imperialist cultural stance. Through the establishment in 1962 of the Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble, the PRC institutionalized this model of dance diplomacy, expanding it to include the entire Third World. Bandung-era dance diplomacy initiatives of the 1950s and early 1960s not only supported important new international alliances and political movements, but also asserted China’s self-identity as part of the East in the way that challenged Eurocentric ideals previously entrenched in China’s domestic dance field.     

Senses of humor,media use,and opinions about the treatment of marginalized groups

This research examines public opinions toward marginalized groups, applying the notion of multiple “senses of humor” as a filter in the process of opinion formation while controlling for the relative impact of media exposure on such opinions. A sample of 288 students at a large urban university responded to an online survey measuring a variety of public opinions, media use (including traditional, news, and interactive) variables, four senses of humor (disparagement, dark/arousal, incongruity, and social currency), and social locators, including political orientation. Results confirm that, in addition to social locators, senses of humor provide a viable set of predictors of public opinion about marginalized groups, clearly surpassing media use. Further, the senses of humor are found to be linked to political orientation, raising issues of the commonalities and origins of these critical filters of sociopolitical attitudes.     

Pathways of Immigrant Political Socialization: Examining the Role of News Media,Social Connections,and Community Interaction

Going beyond the traditional socioeconomic status model of political participation, this study examines pathways that lead to the sociopolitical incorporation of immigrants in the USA, with a focus on the role of communication socialization agents. Using a Current Population Survey sample of 7,626 first-generation immigrants in the USA, results show that communication socialization agents significantly contribute to immigrants’ political socialization, and an important mediating path translates political learning into greater political engagement. Results also identify ethnic differences in how socialization variables affect immigrants’ socialization.     

The political skill and will of expatriates in acculturating to the politics of an organization in a new culture

This paper explores and conceptualizes the process through which expatriates acculturate to the politics of an organization in a new and dominant culture that differs from their origin culture. In addition to an overview of acculturation, we review research on the emergence and perception of political context in organizations, and on political skill and political will. We posit that politically-relevant situational characteristics in organizations and work interact with national culture to affect the intensity with which expatriates perceive politics in their organization. Based on their political skill (operationalized as high versus low) and their political will (operationalized in terms of concern for self versus concern for others), we describe the different political behavior expatriates will use as a means of acculturating to their political context and the effects those strategies have on their acculturative stress and individual effectiveness in the organization.     

Perceived negative political climate among Hispanic/Latino adolescents before and after the 2020 U.S. presidential election: Associations with internalizing symptoms and substance use

The political climate often changes following the installment of a new president. This volatility presents opportunities for examining how elections might affect vulnerable subgroups such as Hispanic/Latino (HL) adolescents. The present study explored the perception of negative political climate among HL adolescents before and after the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its association with internalizing symptoms and substance use. We conducted the study in Los Angeles and Miami between 2020 and 2021, with a sample of 304 HL adolescents (Females = 60.8 %), aged 15.3 years on average. Participants completed measures of negative political climate (pre- post-election) and measures of depressive symptoms, anxiety, substance misuse, and substance use intentions after the election. We used paired tests and linear mixed-effects modeling to explore changes in perceived negative climate before and after the election. Structural equation modeling was used to determine predictors of negative political climate and its associations with internalizing symptoms and substance use. Results indicated that following the election negative political climate increased significantly in Miami and among Cuban-origin adolescents but not in Los Angeles or among Mexican-origin adolescents. Pre-election perceived negative political climate was significantly predicted by gender, study site, and mother’s nativity. Pre-election negative political climate predicted post-election internalizing symptoms and substance use intentions indirectly through post-election negative political climate. HL youth’s perceived political climate is a complex construct that might vary across different sociopolitical contexts and populational sub-groups. Exploring variations in politically-based cultural stressors and their role as mental health and substance use risk factors is crucial to addressing HL disparities.     

Teaching for Liberation: Critical Reflections in Teacher Education

In this article the author shares a critical reflection of his work as a teacher educator over the last five years teaching in both public and private universities in the U.S. Midwest. The author reflects on his work in a class called “Diversity in Education” over the course of two semesters as a way to trace the genealogy of a course that has emancipatory intent. The implications (tensions and contradictions) for this type of course in teacher education are discussed as are why critical pedagogical approaches and liberatory ways of thinking and knowing are fundamentally essential to and ethically necessary in teacher preparation. The author concludes by offering a pedagogy of resilience and radical hope that is fundamentally premised on the idea that intellectual work is meant to be liberationist, and the desire to connect teacher education to a larger political struggle.     

The Affair of the Plan De L'Olivier

ABSTRACT

In France, the Revolution of 1848 reshaped politics as it drew heretofore excluded groups into politics. In Montpellier, these changes provoked contests over the place of new citizens in the body politic and urban space. In August 1848 tensions reached their zenith as royalist residents of a lower-class neighbourhood clashed with the forces of order. Moreover, they defended their neighbourhood from intrusions on the part of their political opponents. Not only did these struggles concern the issue of command over space, but they also showed that the purportedly uncouth men intended to take part in the formulation of politics too.     

Authoritarianism, perceived threat and exclusionism on the eve of the Disengagement: Evidence from Gaza

Major political events such as terrorist attacks and forced relocation of citizens may have an immediate effect on attitudes towards ethnic minorities associated with these events. The psychological process that leads to political exclusionism of minority groups was examined using a field study among Israeli settlers in Gaza days prior to the Disengagement Plan adopted by the Israeli government on June 6, 2004 and enacted in August 2005. Lending credence to integrated threat theory and to theory on authoritarianism, our analyses show that the positive effect of religiosity on political exclusionism results from the two-staged mediation of authoritarianism and perceived threat. We conclude that religiosity fosters authoritarianism, which in turn tends to move people towards exclusionism both directly and through the mediation of perceived threat.     

Soft power: From ethnic attraction to national attraction in sociological globalism

This paper explores the influence of ethnic relations in sociological globalism on the formulation process of a country’s soft power (i.e., national attraction). People migrate into a country, become an ethnic group, and experience sociological contact/interaction with other ethnic groups, through which they form more concrete and experiential attitudes toward each other. In turn, these attitudes affect their perceptions of other ethnic groups’ homeland countries. With soft power being defined as favorability toward a foreign country, this paper investigates the influence of ethnic relations in a three-predictor regression model of soft power—ethnic relations, between country relationship quality, and normative performance (i.e., reputation) of a country. In testing the model, this study uses secondary data consisting of U.S. national surveys including polls of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations on perceptions of foreign countries and aggregate nation-level data. The findings show that ethnic relations has a sizable, significant influence on favorability, second to relationship quality, with normative performance having a weak, insignificant influence. This paper further discusses the findings’ implications for contemporary public diplomacy practice and theory and outlines directions for future study of ethnic relation’s influence on soft power in sociological globalism.     

Islam,state and society in Singapore

Abstract

Muslims are a politically significant religious minority in Singapore. This is compounded by the fact that an overwhelming number of Malays are also Muslims. This conflation of Malay ethnicity and religious identity has led to assumptions of homogeneity when addressing Islam in Singapore. This paper argues for greater care in understanding Muslims in Singapore. It tries to show how the conflation of ethnic and religious identities is a product of historical and political factors. It explores the growing pluralism within Islam as Singaporean Muslims are exposed to processes of modernization, globalization and Islamization. Ultimately, the paper argues that growing heterogeneity is leading to new tensions in the vertical linkages between Islam and the State in Singapore. New contestations for religious authority are producing pressures to de-link ethnic and religious identity in political representation.     

Relational Tensions and Optimal Listening in the Communication Relationships of American and Finnish Legal Professionals

Drawing on relational dialectics, this study examines definitions of optimal listening, the tensions affecting it, cultural differences in both of these and strategies for managing tensions. The participant sample (N?=?101) consists of 76 American attorneys and 25 Finnish judges. The results suggest that differences in national communication cultures and the requirements of professional communication affect the definitions of optimal listening. The American participants perceived this as a people-oriented and the Finns as a fact-oriented activity. Both groups experienced reported tensions between real and ideal listening, autonomy and connection, the public and the private, and also between equality and inequality. Culturally, specific tensions were also reported.     

Life is not complete without critique: Chua Beng Huat as model

This essay outlines an intellectual portrait of Chua Beng Huat and offers a critical appreciation of his contributions as an academic, a scholar, and an intellectual. I highlight key biographical details: his family upbringing in Bukit Ho Swee, schooling in the Chinese and English mediums, higher education and academic experience in Canada, his return to Singapore, and serving as a sociology faculty at the National University of Singapore, which he made a home base for inter-Asia studies. I discuss his pedagogical approach, which extends to his research and public engagement. In reviewing his works, I focus on the theme of communitarianism as a basis of political legitimacy in East Asia, with housing provision in Singapore as a prime example. His project presents an alternative to Western liberal democracy taken as the universal bedrock of political modernity. I characterize it as the recuperation of the social in the face of capitalist modernity, which is conducive to atomization and corrosive of solidarity. Yet, he projects the possibilities of a more politically liberalized communitarianism. What he offers is not a set of ready answers that reconcile Marx’s “realm of necessity” and “realm of freedom,” but a lucid exposition of the tensions between the two realms under contemporary conditions.     

The politics of media policy: how political?

This article reviews three recently published books which make an important contribution, in their different ways, to our understanding of major media policy issues in the digital era. They are all concerned with the core issue of how well media policy serves the public interest. They exemplify different approaches to the study of media policy with regard to how political they are in their content. The first two draw strongly on political science. The first might be best described as critically engaged and has an ideologically sensitive perspective on media policy in the United Kingdom and the United States. The second adopts a policy studies approach to examine the introduction of digital TV in the United Kingdom. The third, written by a media sociologist, provides a comparative study of policies for public service TV in six European countries. It offers rather less political analysis, but presents a useful policy content-focused approach. The article concludes by calling for more work on the development of policies that will ensure the continued fulfilment in the digital era of public service journalistic functions and provision of public service content.     

Beyond cultural differences: The sociopolitical impact on supervision between Arab supervisees and Jewish supervisors in Israel

Little attention has been given to the cultural and political aspects of the supervisory relationship between Arab Palestinian supervisees and Jewish Israeli supervisors in medical psychology in Israel. This paper presents a focus group of five interns and certified medical psychologists of Arab Palestinian origin who describe their experiences and relationships with their Jewish supervisors. Constant comparison analysis revealed three main themes: fusion between professional and national identities, gaps that go beyond the cultural differences, and a sense of alienation and isolation in the supervision setting. The findings indicate the inevitable presence of the political conflict in the supervision relationship and correspond with findings for other professions such as social work. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed and practical recommendations for supervisors are offered.     

Reputation in the fifteenth century credit market; some tales from the ecclesiastical courts of York

This article explores the language used to defend reputation in instances of defamation, debt and theft presented before the ecclesiastical courts of the Archbishopric of York in the latter part of the medieval period. Finding a circulating language of trust and household credibility in the court papers, the argument concludes that the commodification of reputation was not a phenomenon brought about by the Reformation but that a reputation mechanism was intrinsic to the medieval market embedded in informal institutions, social norms and cultural dictates and enforced in the courts.     

“I will not hate myself because you cannot accept me”: Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies

ABSTRACT

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.     

North Korean women defectors in South Korea and their political participation

This study examines the political participation intentions of North Korean women refugees. Previous literature tends to highlight the sufferings and difficulties that female refugees experience as they leave their homelands and settle in a new country. Few studies have been directed toward the political dimension of refugee life. The empirical results show that North Korean women defectors hold generally participatory attitudes toward politics and mostly liberal opinions on policy issues. Furthermore, among the socio-demographic variables, age and marital status are generally influential in the intention of political participation among the North Korean women defectors. Among the political attitudinal variables, attitude toward environmental policy consistently affects political participation intention. With respect to defector-specific variables, satisfaction with life in South Korea is influential, whereas cultural adaptation is not.