Learning the American Way: Sports International and American Soft Power

Abstract

From 1962 to 1968, the United States Government along with private entities funded the training of athletes from developing nations through a non-profit organization named Sports International. Led by former Peace Corps member David Dichter, Sports International sought to enhance America’s image in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The initial aim of the programme was to train athletes to compete at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The theory behind Sports International centred on the notion that helping developing nations achieves athletic success would influence them to view the United States more favourably. The idea to form Sports International came in the midst of the Cold War as the United States and the Soviet Union battled on a multitude of fronts. This article argues that American leaders worried about the presence of the Soviet Union in developing countries and sought ways to maximize American influence in those areas. The theory of soft power, a concept most prominently explicated by American international relations theorist Joseph Nye, forms the framework for this study. By analysing Sports International through this lens, this article demonstrates several problems which might ensure should one overemphasize the effect of sport on a nation’s soft power.     

Global solidarity against unilateralism

Abstract

The 1955 Bandung Conference was a crucial moment in the history of the former colonial states of Asia and Africa. The Bandung Spirit that came out of it was a strategic foundation for building solidarity and cooperation among nations. The Cold War period and its aftermath, however, indicate that the Bandung spirit was in decline. Meanwhile, the United States, which had intended to unilaterally disrupt the Bandung Conference, continues to conduct unilateral actions in pursuit of its hegemonic interests. Along this line, the United Nations has often been bypassed by the US and other powerful nations in their unilateral initiatives. In response to this situation, it is important to rekindle the Bandung Spirit and to struggle for the democratization of international relations. In today’s context the struggle should be focused on three areas, namely the democratization of world politics, world economy, and the United Nations.     

The camera in pain: memories of the Cold War in East Asian independent documentaries

Abstract

This article begins with a discussion of the changing topography of cultural production in East Asia over the last 25?years, especially as it concerns the genre of independent documentary film, and then it turns to three independent documentaries filmed in Japan and North Korea, South Korea and Japan, and China, respectively: Yang Yong-hi's Dear Pyongyang (2005 Dear Pyongyang. 2005. Directed by Yang Yong-hi. Busan International Film Festival. [Google Scholar]), Mun Jeong-hyun's Grandmother's Flower (2007 Grandmother's Flower. 2007. Directed by Mun Jeong-hyun. Busan International Film Festival: [Google Scholar]), and Wang Bing's He Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2006). Erased from the official historical record and excluded from public commemoration, the alternate history of pain traced by these documentaries resubmits the Cold War to examination from deep inside its most private wounds. In the process, the filmmakers encounter not only the memories of the earlier generation that lived through the most violent episodes of the Cold War, but also come to question their own history and identities within the process of the Cold War's decomposition.     

Rethinking the Rural Idyll

ABSTRACT

This article traces the profound social repercussions that resulted from the mass enlistment of British office workers into the armed forces during the First World War. Drawing heavily upon fictionalized autobiographies of the period, my study examines the various stages of the clerk's experience of the conflict and argues that the confidence gained during warfare by surviving office workers fundamentally shaped a more democratic postwar society. This change is evidenced, I argue, in the profile of the fictional clerk that emerges in British literature after 1918.     

Politics,Pauperism and Power in Late Nineteenth Century Ireland. By Virginia Crossman.

ABSTRACT

Food and military identity were inextricably linked in the British Army: rations were a thrice daily indicator of the men's separation from their civilian selves. The soldiers were what they ate, but they were also where and how they ate; the grubby rapacity of the barrack dining hall, the absence of civilizing cutlery and the unfamiliar food delineated their new role as clearly as any uniform. Institutional feeding facilitated the erasure of self, an unhelpful attribute in the military world. Men's accounts indicate the conflict between their appetites and what they all too often regarded as oppression in a dietary form.     

永安抗战进步文化活动中共产党员群体研究

永安抗战进步文化活动是中国共产党领导抗日救亡运动的重要组成部分，一批共产党人在其中发挥了先锋模范作用。研究共产党员群体在永安进步文化活动中所起的作用，对揭示抗日战争胜利的原因有着重要意义。本文拟以国立福建音乐专科学校为例，对此课题进行探讨。     

The Ethics in Family-themed Yuan Drama

在以弘扬贤达孝义、劝贤劝孝为主要内容的家庭贤孝剧中，元剧作家对“孝”、～睇”这两种传统伦理美德和伦理规范作了新的阐述，指出“孝”、“悌”强调的不仅是下辈对上辈的恭敬和义务，同时还包含下辈对上辈的恭敬和义务的履行与否，这与上辈对下辈的态度、行为、品德有着不可割裂的关系，并强调了“孝”、“悌”在传统男权社会中对于家庭的稳定乃至一国稳定都具有极强的现实意义。     

抗美援朝战争与我党对台政策

解放台湾,实现统一,是中共一直坚持的目标。从新中国成立到抗美援朝战争,中共坚持以武力歼灭国民党残余力量,解放台湾。然而,抗美援朝战争使中共中央面临的局势发生重大变化,中共中央被迫暂缓武力解放台湾的步伐。抗美援朝战争结束后,中共中央根据形势的变化,逐渐提出以和平的方式实现统一。     

浅论孙子军事战略思想在散打比赛训练中的作用

散打是一项具有强烈对抗性的运动,散打比赛既是双方实力的较量,又是双方谋略、临场指挥思想优劣的较量。在赛场上的斗智斗勇,表现出与战争形式的类似性,散打战术的形成与发展,与军事学和谋略学是密不可分的。《孙子兵法》是中国传统文化中的瑰宝,教练员、运动员了解和把握《孙子兵法》中的军事战略思想并使之成为散打运动的战术谋略,正确地把握对手和自己的形势,将会为散打比赛训练带来一个全新的思维视角,对散打运动训练科学化产生积极的影响。     

浅析意识形态对抗战后期中美关系的影响

随着抗日战争胜利曙光的出现，中美两国在血与火中凝成的友谊发生了微妙的变化，其中有意识形态这个曾被忽视的精神领域因素的作用。文章主要通过对美国一贯的意识形态的考察、抗战后期美国意识形态的特点及中国国民党、共产党对此的反应，来试证意识形态对抗战后期中美关系有重大的影响。