The politics of national atonement and narrations of war

Abstract

In March 2007, Japan’s ‘national atonement project’ for survivors of military sexual slavery was officially concluded. The atonement project that was implemented by a Japanese government‐established non‐governmental organization – the Asian Women’s Fund – has distributed its fund to a number of survivors in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and the Netherlands since its inception in 1995. Over the years, intense politicization around the project has made it extremely difficult for most observers to assess whether the project was successful or not. Several prominent scholars in Japan and South Korea have called for a more compassionate and positive assessment of the project’s good intentions, while feminist activists continue to critique the project’s negative interventions in the process of redress and reconciliation in Asia. This essay is an attempt to open up a space to rethink the felicitousness of the atonement project by focusing on the ways in which the project told its own story of war, violence, and gender. By juxtaposing stories told by Filipina survivors of the ‘comfort women’ system with one that has been told by the atonement project implemented by the Asian Women’s Fund, it seeks to find a way to reassess whether the project acknowledged the survivors’ claims for justice and compensation.     

Caroline Ware,Consumer Activism and American Democracy During the New Deal, 1933–45

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on how the New Deal consumer activist Caroline F. Ware crafted an ambitious consumerist vision for the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. This vision aimed to end the Depression and bring post-war prosperity and to create a new kind of American democracy and citizenship, one suited to the promises and perils of an industrialized, urbanized America. One member of a loose cohort of like-minded intellectuals, and self-styled consumer ‘experts', Ware made one of the most persuasively articulated intellectual contributions of the period to a particular kind of liberal consumer activism.     

Values in motion: anti-counterfeiting measures and the securitization of pharmaceutical flows

ABSTRACT

The past decade has seen an increase in anti-counterfeiting practices, especially in the pharmaceutical field. These practices aim at reducing the number of bad medicines available on the market, especially in countries where pharmaceutical regulation is still weak. But they have been accused of serving the interests of Big Pharma by reinforcing intellectual property instead of promoting better quality medicines. Based on a study of the controversies provoked by anti-counterfeiting laws and devices, this paper analyses anti-counterfeiting politics and shows: (a) the aim of this mode of government is to discriminate between medicines in order to regulate the value attached to distribution processes and (b) the tensions and contradictions which characterize anti-counterfeiting discourses and practices. As such, a central characteristic of pharmaceutical markets is the shift of value conflicts towards circulation and distribution rather than production. The securitization of pharmaceutical flows, rather than being in addition to the production of pharmaceuticals, emerges as a new disputed way of producing economic value, legality and social legitimacy for globalized technical commodities such as medicines.     

Art as Activism #stateoftheart: The Art Teachers Association of Ireland's campaign towards reform of the Leaving Certificate Art Curriculum

The Art Teachers Association of Ireland's (ATAI), #stateoftheart campaign worked to persuade Irish policymakers to develop a new curriculum for Leaving Certificate art, reforming the long‐outdated 1972 curriculum. Students across the country designed over 3,000 postcards for the Minister for Education and an online petition was signed by 2,500 people. Students and teachers took to the corridors of schools and the streets of their towns to highlight the power of the arts and call for reform. Recently it was announced that a Senior Cycle development group under the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment would be created to address full reform of Leaving Certificate Art. This article will examine the context and rationale for the #stateoftheart campaign drawing on the images and voices of students and teachers.     

‘Do it yourself’ scholarship: from punk rock to qualitative research

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) framework as a mode of critical qualitative scholarship. The authors argue that the production and distribution methods used by punks, zine-makers, graffitists, and skateboarders – among others – may support the social justice intentions of critical qualitative inquiry. The use the DIY framework to suggest activism itself is a collaborative process shaped by the frictions between activists and dominant systems, but mediated by the consumers of cultural production. Through examples and case studies, the authors demonstrate how DIY methods support patterns of collaboration that can lead to social change. The paper concludes with a proposal for DIY scholarship that suggests how critical qualitative researchers can amplify the utility of their methods to support social justice.     

Responding to Hong Kong’s political crisis: moralist activism amongst youth

ABSTRACT

Discourses of morality are prevalent in contemporary Hong Kong youth activism. This paper suggests that this moralist disposition is the product of youth frustrations towards Hong Kong’s political crisis, whereby the power gap between civil society and the government renders the former incapable of exerting substantial influence over the governance of the city. Rather than ascribe the cause of this power imbalance solely to government policies, this paper reveals that civil society also contributed towards the making of this political crisis. By reviewing the citizen-led pro-democracy movement throughout the decades, it is shown that civil society has been ineffective in implementing political reforms because its actors and organisations harbour a political subjectivity that prioritises economic considerations over democratic aspirations, and are thus inclined to compromise with the government to preserve economic stability than to demand for political reforms. As a result, contemporary youth activists describe Hong Kong civil society as “uncaring” and lacking in moral commitment towards realising democratic reforms that will facilitate the development of a just society. Seeking to reconfigure such political attitudes that currently prevail in civil society, youth activists refashion themselves into political actors embodying a form of moral personhood that embraces notions of responsibility and of wanting to do good for the city, to show that another way of being politically engaged in Hong Kong is possible.     

Christianity and Humanitarianism in the Doukhobor Campaign, 1895–1902

This article examines the campaign undertaken by British Quakers in the 1890s to defend the Doukhobor sect of Russian Christians. The notion of humanitarian sympathy is too often applied as if it were a constant. Quakers are seen by many as exemplars of humanitarian action. By contrast this article argues that the concern that led to defend the Doukhobors came from very specific images of Christian suffering, and that the campaign to defend the sect was shaped by religious, not humanitarian, aims and methods and the particular history and repertoire of Quaker campaigning. It contributes to the history of humanitarianism by showing how humanitarian campaigning derives from the social and cultural history of various actors, and how humanitarian activity is coloured, at all levels, by its social and ideological positioning.     

Building the urban commons in Singapore: the cemetery,red-light district and public housing estates as sites of contestation

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the state of informal social activism initiated by Singaporean youth via the creation of ground-up initiatives. Having witnessed state-civil society relations, where calibrated liberalisation, co-option and coercive measures are used as strategies of state control, these informal collectives seek new modalities and methodologies in their efforts to build the urban commons. By following three of such collectives, this paper seeks to explore the overlapping cultural and social realms they operate in, as well as the new modalities and methodologies they bring, such as participatory art and design. They negotiate constraints from both the state and market through (1) strategic positioning of legal statuses and (2) the formation of a network society, building social capital and a new vocabulary for future efforts in self-organisation.     

Market disruption as a regime for athlete activism: An economic analysis of college football player protests

In this study, the authors examine the market disruption of college football protests, under the belief the ability of market disruption can play a significant role for activism movements to challenge authority as well as expand opportunity for social change. Specifically considering game attendance as an important form of market demand, the authors employ regression modeling to analyze the relationship between game attendance and protests organized to struggle against racial injustices by football players at four Division I Football Bowl Subdivision programs. The results from the empirical models suggest that the voting demographics of the local market a team plays in have a significant relationship with attendance after a protest, with some schools experiencing declines in consumer interest. Results advance the current inquiry of athlete activism through an economic lens, which contributes to further discussions on the empowerment of athletes and their roles in social activism.     

创业投资对制造企业创新的资源支持效应——股东积极主义路径与异质性情境

针对转型时期面临提质增效压力的中国制造企业,基于创业板2009-2019年的制造企业面板数据,探究创业投资对于制造企业自主创新资源配置的作用机制.研究发现:具有耐心资本与专家赋能属性的创业投资股权参与,缓解了制造企业的创新资源约束,促进了制造企业创新活动的财务资源与智力资源的配置力度;在作用路径上,创业投资通过加强股权制衡、参与董事会决策等中介路径,对激励制造企业创新资源配置发挥了积极主义投资者的角色作用;那些所处环境具有高度动态性、市场竞争激烈、接受政府财税扶持较多的制造企业,.创业投资的创新资源支持效应更显著.研究结论的决策参考和政策启示为:制造企业应主动进行对外融资营销、加强与专业创业投资机构之间的合作,以增强获取和配置创新资源力度;创业投资机构应切实秉持服务创新创业的使命,持续提升支持制造企业创新的专家赋能水准;政府职能主管部门应营造创业投资机构多样化、专业化和规范化运作的制度环境,引导创业投资更多地流入转型升级的制造企业.