COSMOPOLITAN CODIFICATIONS: ELITES,EXPATRIATES, AND DIFFERENCE IN KATHMANDU,NEPAL

Globalization has been the site of many renegotiations of identity, both at the supra- and subnational levels. Yet, there is an interstitial zone of communication between the global and the local in which distinct processes of boundary-making and translation take place. This essay examines mediators of internationalization, elite nationals and expatriate employees, as they negotiate the form that difference can take in the global marketplace. The contentious politics of Nepalese nationalism as well as South Asian colonial delineations of difference provide precedents for the current social practices of a cosmopolitan population that establishes a hierarchy of difference while also excusing themselves from demarcation and restricting the purview of the concept of culture. The result is a zone made safe for the operation of neoliberal business (a practice seen to be without history or geography) with alterity only allowed in narrowly commodifiable settings.     

Cosmopolitan pathways from the Global South: How non-middle-class students become desirable Fulbright applicants

International student mobility (ISM) is largely interpreted as a global middle-class capital accumulation strategy. Cosmopolitanism, which is the named outcome and effect of these mobile forms of social and cultural capital, is therefore disproportionately available to already privileged students. This study moves beyond this prevailing interpretation by examining how students from working- or lower-middle-class families with limited resources in Global South countries combine bottom-up cosmopolitanism with educational mobility to get selected into highly competitive spaces, such as the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, the most prestigious educational and cultural program in the United States. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with successful Fulbright applicants and participant observation, my findings suggest that working- and lower-middle-class applicants are largely successful because of their cosmopolitan dispositions which they cultivate in creative and agentive ways. This article adds texture and complexity to existing discussions on middle-class hegemony in ISM and cosmopolitan subject-making.     

Anticipating Nollywood: Lagos circa 1996

This essay discusses the Nigerian film Owo Blow (1996 Owo Blow. 1996. Film. Directed by T. Ogidan, Nigeria: First Call Production and Support.  [Google Scholar]), as a way to examine an aesthetic tendency that is largely missing in Nollywood, and to explore the relationship between media and the city, particularly in regard to Lagos. I use this film to propose three issues that are worth highlighting for a productive engagement with the relationship between media and urbanity. First, I argue that the current global interest in Nollywood is highly mediated, isolating the English‐language‐accented, popular genre‐formatted sub‐genre as the Nollywood film. Secondly, this process of mediation has tended to a kind of totalisation because it emphasises the commercial as the primary identity of the cinematic practice. Thirdly, I argue that the possible globalisation of Nollywood is undercut by limitations on how well the generic type can travel. Although recent and longstanding bureaucratic exhortations of Nigerian filmmakers to promote positive images of the country are often derided, Nollywood already fulfils this expectation by default because a systemic, ideologically explicit critique of Lagos as an urban city, for instance, is hard to come by in the films. I contrast this with Owo Blow, which attempts one such critique, a multi‐layered analysis of Lagos as a case study of the postcolonial incredible.     

The Sociology of Adolescence and Youth in the 1990s: A Critical Commentary

The 1990s saw considerable advances in the state of research on adolescence and youth. This article provides a critical commentary on a subset of this research, focusing on the causes and consequences of the lengthened period in which the transition to adulthood occurs. It provides a brief history of adolescence research, identifying a select set of topics, themes, and research problems that will guide research on adolescence and youth over the next decade. These research foci, which include peer group relations, biological influences on adolescence, employment experiences, increased autonomy, and racial and gender differences, are described as representing either continuities or advances in adolescence research. The strengths and shortcomings of this research are detailed. The paper concludes by suggesting promising areas for future research and by providing guidelines for undertaking such research.     

Introduction to ‘Reclaiming democracy from below: from the contemporary state capitalist system to peoples’ sovereignty’

ABSTRACT

This Special Forum is based on a collective dialogue between place-based struggles to defend rights and territories and the dynamics of global trends. Behind apparently fragmented battles we see an emerging common vision, like a mosaic composed of separate tiles, building towards emancipation and justice. Based on discussions in a workshop in Siena in November 2018, the Forum assembles some pieces of the mosaic through five thematic articles crafted in exchanges between social movement, academic and civil society activists. In this Introduction we review other current convergence efforts looking at two related dimensions: sharing ideas and analysis in order to develop a common understanding of global evolutions, and bringing people together to take transformative action by building shared spaces, alliances, campaigns and solidarity. We then situate the Siena workshop and the People's Sovereignty process that has grown from it in this broader context. Finally, we introduce the five articles.     

上海发展离岸贸易问题研究

上海离岸贸易目前尚处于初期发展阶段,与伦敦、纽约、中国香港、新加坡等全球城市相比存在较大差距,受到离岸金融不发达等诸多瓶颈因素的严重制约。今后3至5年,是上海推进离岸贸易发展的攻坚时期,上海离岸贸易发展处于逆水行舟、不进则退的关键阶段。上海必须审时度势,紧密结合上海实际,借鉴国际发达城市的经验,扬长避短,制定正确的发展战略,夯实基础,提升功能,探索并设计有效的发展模式,制定并实施有针对性的政策和配套措施,这将是离岸贸易发展成功的关键。     

Students’ views on thesis supervision in international master’s degree programmes in Finnish universities

This paper employs an intercultural perspective to examine students’ views on master’s thesis supervision and the roles and responsibilities of supervisors and students. The 302 respondents who answered the online questionnaire were enrolled in international master’s degree programmes in four Finnish universities. The study revealed asymmetric views by students regarding the division of responsibilities between themselves and their supervisors. It was found that very few students and supervisors discuss the differences in study cultures between Finland and students’ countries of origin, their cultural backgrounds or the aspects of Finnish society that students do not understand. The research suggests that supervisors and students need to conduct early discussions on supervision and culture.     

HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE NEO-LIBERAL IMAGINATION

‘The end of sovereignty’: this has been an ominous refrain in the chorus of global political and human rights analyses aimed at reformulating a post-Cold War configuration of world power. In cultural studies, the same pronouncement is more likely made through a mix of theoretical exuberance and ambivalence toward a post-nationalist and cosmopolitan imaginary. This essay takes as a point of departure the rise of ‘new sovereignties’ – a fractured Westphalianism – as a rubric for understanding the political imagination about the international community today. It asks: to what dimensions of the regime of the new sovereignties can the human rights legal discourse as we know it today still exert influence, given the new configurations of globally disaggregated power? With human rights today reemerging as a bifurcation, how can cultural studies reconcile a theory of rights as subaltern claim-making with that of rights as an all-englobing tool in the neo-liberal order of world justice? Through a preliminary mapping of the moral-juridical and political forces that shape the regime of the new sovereignties, this essay attempts to illuminate why rights as international deontological politics is inadvertently complicit with the reproduction of rights as something constitutive of empire and neo-liberalism.     

From intergovernmental negotiations to (sub)national change

In the last thirty years, a process of global norm creation in the field of gender equality has taken place. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women marks a milestone in this process: it emerged as the first legally binding international instrument for the protection of women's rights. The 180 states that have ratified the Convention have interpreted their treaty obligations in diverse ways, ranging from reluctance to active incorporation. Beyond its original mandate, CEDAW has increased attention on gender issues within the UN human rights framework. Further, it has motivated transnational NGO activism that uses the Convention to connect local understandings of women's rights with global standards to influence national policy developments. Taking these global, national and transnational dynamics together, the article argues that CEDAW has been transformed from a ‘classical’ intergovernmental regime to a transnational network enforcing women's rights. Based on these findings, a theoretical view on global norm creation and enforcement is developed that stresses the reciprocal interrelation between global, national and local spheres. Instead of assuming a ‘trickle-down’ dynamic as a consequence of global agreements, it is argued that the legitimacy and authority of global norms depends on their active interpretation and appropriation within national and local contexts all over the world.     

上海发展进口高端消费品牌研究

上海作为中国重要的贸易口岸城市和商业中心城市,国际贸易和商业批发零售贸易均十分发达。通过对上海服装、皮具、钟表、珠宝、化妆品五类13个进口高端消费品牌的详尽调研,研究进口高端消费品牌在上海的发展现状、背景、意义、主要趋势及其面临的问题,并提出相关政策建议,从而说明发展进口高端消费品牌,对提升上海城市的综合实力,提高上海商业的发展水平,使上海成为与纽约、伦敦、巴黎和东京等并肩的国际大都市和商业中心,进一步推动上海国际贸易中心建设具有重要的战略意义。     

完善现代流通体系加快上海国际贸易中心建设

流通位于市场最前沿,是国民经济各部门间的桥梁和纽带,并引导着生产。发展现代流通以提高城市的集聚辐射能力是上海作为国际大都市的功能之一,上海的贸易中心建设与发展现代流通业紧密相连。通过阐述现代流通的内涵及发展趋势,探讨现代流通业与上海国际贸易中心建设之间的关系,分析上海流通业发展现状及存在的瓶颈问题,提出上海在加快国际贸易中心建设进程中应积极构建十大贸易服务平台、优化商务布局,并积极争取国家政策支持等发展思路。     

Stakeholder Perspectives on Children's Mental Health Needs and Supports in Six Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries

Low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) are faced with disproportionately high levels of unmet child mental health needs. This study explored through interviews the perspectives of 17 inter‐agency service stakeholders from Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Rwanda and Turkey on existing supports and challenges. Four themes emerged on the holistic nature of children's mental health needs linked with disadvantage; limited resources and skilled workforce; stigma; and strategies for future implementation, including awareness, parental engagement, skills‐based programmes and cultural adaptation. Stakeholder input is essential in conceptualising, developing and evaluating culturally appropriate interventions for vulnerable children in LMIC.     

Manacled to Identity: Cosmopolitanism,Class, and ‘The Culture Concept’ in Stephen Crane

Abstract

This article begins with a close reading of Stephen Crane’s short story ‘Manacled’ from 1900, which situates this rarely considered short work within the context of contemporary debates about realism. I then proceed to argue that many of the debates raised by the tale have an afterlife in our own era of American literary studies, which has frequently focused on questions of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ in its reading of realism and naturalism to the exclusion of the importance of cosmopolitan discourses of diffusion and exchange across national borders. I then offer a brief reading of Crane’s novel George’s Mother, which follows Walter Benn Michaels in suggesting that the recent critical attention paid to particularities of cultural difference in American studies have come to conflate ideas of class and social position with ideas of culture in ways that have ultimately obscured the presence of genuine historical inequalities in US society. In order to challenge this critical commonplace, I situate Crane’s work within a history of transatlantic cosmopolitanism associated with the ideas of Franz Boas and Matthew Arnold to demonstrate the ways in which Crane’s narratives sought out an experience of the universal within their treatments of the particular.     

Favoured Free‐time: Comparing Children’s Activity Preferences in the UK and the USA

This study presents a comparative study of the free‐time activity preferences of 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children in the UK and USA, as drawn by them in art workshops. Six themes emerged relating to sport, outdoor play, family/peers, media, special occasions and other (indefinable) activities. The children’s talk about their drawings revealed additional preferences for ‘obsessive hobbies’, ‘doing nothing’, relationships with others, and the local environment. Whilst the emergent patterns displayed strong cross‐cultural similarities in free‐time activity choices and participation, as well as compliance with the conventional construction of ‘childhood’, the findings were context‐specific and locally inflected.     

Translators and Transformers: International Inspiration and Exchange in Social Movements

Cross-national traffic of ideas and practices contribute to the spread of collective action across borders. These processes have only recently become the subject of study and theoretical discussion. The theoretical models that have been developed so far fail to take into account the complex nature of intercultural communication. No attention is paid to problems of interpretation and translation that may occur and how potential adopters adapt foreign ideas and practices to a new context. Moreover, the central role of networks and existing (power) relations within these networks in this process is often neglected. Instead, I propose an empirically grounded, alternative model of the process, based on the cases of women's organizations against sexual violence in the Netherlands and Spain. My approach focuses on the processes of reception, recontextualization and the relations within the diffusion network. The reception of innovative repertoires was different for organizations that came across the example of pioneers at an early stage than for later groups. Early groups had less critical distance and more readily identified with pioneers than later observers. While some early followers aimed at ‘literal’ translation of an inspiring example, far more adaptations were made by the later groups. Innovative repertories traveled through networks, but within these networks power struggles emerged over ownership and the right to transform.     

How context influences the ideologies and strategies of disabled people’s organisations: a case study from Cambodia

Abstract

Studies of disability movements have centred on exploring how movements have emerged and how their strategies have been devised to effectively advocate for the rights of the people with disabilities they represent. However, little attention has been focused on examining their organisational contexts and how they shape ideologies and choice of strategies, which have implications for the success of their advocacy endeavours. This article seeks to contribute to knowledge in this area by studying the case of a disabled people’s organisation in Cambodia. The resource dependency of disabled people’s organisations on international development partners results in their ideologies and strategies being driven by the latter. This has not only fragmented their resources, but also made their endeavours less relevant to the needs of people with disabilities. This may act to prevent such organisations from building a common ground for collective action, and from effectively pressing for social change.     

现代服务业供应链整合与上海国际贸易中心建设

在当今经济全球化背景下,供应链日益成为产业组织的一种主流生产模式,高端与专业性服务业的供应链整合尤为重要。服务企业能否形成以其为核心的供应链,关键取决于各自的供应链管理能力。通过考察上海商贸、金融、物流、计算机与信息服务业等涉及国际贸易中心建设的关键服务行业,在分析上海国际贸易中心建设中现代服务业供应链整合发展的现状与存在问题的基础上,提出上海增强服务业供应链整合能力的对策建议。     

把握上海“十二五”发展历史方位

＂十二五＂时期,国内外发展环境的重大调整和变化,给上海加快建设＂四个中心＂和国际化大都市既带来了复杂性和不确定性,同时也提供了重要历史机遇。上海面临着加快转变经济发展方式、实现＂四个率先＂和加速建设＂四个中心＂、参与全球竞争的双重任务,必须以加快转变发展方式为主线,以创新为龙头,全面推进＂四个中心＂建设,加快城市转型发展。