The Phenomenon Of The Public Wife: An Exercise In Goffman's Impression Management*

Approaching the topic of American leader-image from the perspective of politics-as-theater (political communication as exchange of symbols), this paper examines a taken-for-granted visual symbol which a national political leader is invariably expected to present: a wife. Her contributions to her husband's “impression management” techniques (Goffman, 1959) are studied in Goffman's “defensive” categories of dramaturgical loyalty, dramaturgical discipline, and dramaturgical circumspection. This analysis suggests that the visible presence of a wife in public leadership rituals offers the public voter or viewer important reassurances or symbolic guarantees about her husband's “morality”—and, therefore, his appropriateness for public trust. She has become a necessary partof his public performance because of our everyday need for “cultural absolutes” (Furay, 1977) in the image of our leadership figures.     

Enchanted: Harry Potter and magical capitalism in urban China

“Pottermania”, or the crazed transnational consumption of the most popular children's fantasy fiction series in publishing history, has swept across urban China. It took place along with the rapid emergence of the country's middle‐class culture since the 1990s, marked primarily by a robust consumer revolution constructed as both reality and global dream. Even before China's official membership in the World Trade Organization began, Harry Potter (translated into Chinese) had been widely popular in affluent urban centers, bringing a foreign cultural impact that accompanies the economic tidal waves promised by the accession to the WTO. This essay explores the relationships between local consumption of a transnational cultural text/intertext and the formation of an emerging social imaginary about the urban Chinese middle class. It suggests that the Potter series promotes an alternating valorization and critique of capitalist consumption, which provides young Chinese readers, growing up in the midst of a consumer revolution, with a dialectic of enchantment. It is argued that this enchantment presents a productive tension with which to theorize the current moment of Chinese consumerist capitalism.     

Digitized diaspora governance during the COVID-19 pandemic: China's diaspora mobilization and Chinese migrant responses in Italy

We explore how the Chinese diaspora state during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 managed to transform a severe health crisis into a geo-political opportunity for transnational nation-building through diaspora governance based on extensive use of social media technologies. By adopting a multi-scalar perspective, we analyse the intertwined nature of top-down and bottom-up processes of the Chinese Party-state's diaspora mobilization. Based on discourse and ethnographic analysis, we argue that China's diaspora governance exposed a new and strong capacity for extra-territorial governance. We explore how discursive hegemony, social control and diaspora mobilization were achieved by widely employing the Chinese social media application, WeChat. We also contend that this was facilitated by the Italian government's and media's pro-China attitudes to emphasize the importance of considering transnational embeddedness when studying the implementation and impact of interactive online technology for diaspora governance in an illiberal political context.     

Talent flowscapes and circular mobility in a Belt and Road (BRI) perspective - Global talent flows revisited

This article brings the role of talent migration to the discussion of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mainly focusing on academic talents. We explore the foundation for BRI's talent development as a long-term and gradual process building on policies dating back to China's opening in 1978. China's opening saw an increased number of individuals who could improve their skills, knowledge, and network from China globally or inside China from elsewhere on the globe. These global experiences have resulted in the Chinese government, companies, and institutions' necessity to compete for talent or human resources on a global “market”. We interpret the call for establishing people-to-people connections within the BRI as an intensification of China's existing talent strategy. However, at a micro-level, we continue to find that international talents and returned migrants perceive themselves as outsiders which hinders China's talent attraction policies and results in a circular movement of academic talents to and from China     

A Womb That Is (Not Always) One's Own

The global diffusion of technology has spurred growth across a variety of sectors and increased linkages among actors in the global political economy. Advances in communication and travel technologies connect disparate regions around the world, while advances in medical technologies have increased the opportunities and options for both extending and creating life. Together these advances have led to the globalization of medical tourism and the rise of reproductive tourism. Reproductive tourism covers a variety of services, including surrogacy. As a result of such technological advances, not only is surrogacy increasing, it is increasingly transnational and commercialized. One of the top destinations for reproductive tourism is India, and Indian surrogates are becoming a hot commodity for western individuals looking to enlarge their families. Hailed by advocates as beneficial to all parties involved, critics are quick to point out the potential for exploitation and abuse in transnational commercial surrogacy arrangements. Adopting Spike Peterson's Reproductive, Productive and Virtual framing, this article explores the contradiction and the potential that results when the boundaries between economies blur and what has traditionally been considered a reproductive activity becomes another form of labor for sale.     

Crisis and public intellectuals: From the transnational intellectual field to the digital global public circuit

We examine the modes of intervention of global public intellectuals at times of crisis. In critical situations, public intellectuals take positions on matters that affect the societies they inhabit and, eventually, all humanity. To this end, they take advantage of the opportunities afforded by new communications technologies, establishing an important distinction between the “analog” intellectual (who relies on the slow time of books, opinion columns, and bookstores) and the “digital” intellectual who uses modern information and communications technologies. To study the activities of global public intellectuals and their political influence, we propose to leave aside the notion of “transnational intellectual field” in favor of an understanding of a transnational intellectual stage peopled by a certain type of intellectual agent whose symbolic and cultural production is disseminated through a digital global public circuit. To illustrate the functioning of a circuit of this type, we take the example of the Project Syndicate platform.     

Beijing: a media capital in the making

In the two decades since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, the commercialization of the Chinese media has become a significant force. With the increasing demand for original content and a possible “cultural trade deficit” in media content, there has been much discussion about agglomeration and clustering. Beijing, as the national media centre of China, has witnessed the process of media agglomeration while facing the problem of cultural export during the commercialization of the media. Michael Curtin's idea of media capital, which sees it as absorbing media resources and personnel and exporting media products transnationally, provides a dynamic perspective on understanding media agglomeration and dispersion under different political social and cultural circumstances. Hence, the question of whether Beijing will transform into a transnational media capital is worth studying in order to observe and comprehend China's media industry in transition. Drawing on Michael Curtin's three media capital trajectories, this paper interprets tensions and challenges generated in the process of media industry agglomeration and growth in Beijing. Emphasis is placed on the third trajectory, socio-cultural variation.     

Chinese Transnationalism in Britain: A Longer History

This article looks at the early history of the British Chinese community in the light of transnational studies. It questions the belief that homeland and intradiasporic economic ties are predominantly new, save on the rare occasions that elites maintained them, and that early political transnationalism was less common still and even more sure to be elite based. In so doing, it draws attention to the role played by political elites in galvanising migrant communities. It also analyses the role played by class-based organisations in constructing transnational ties, a form of Chinese transnationalism that other studies fail to note. It finds that transnational practices and institutions pervaded the early community in its immigrant phases, both from below and from above. This immigration was overwhelmingly proletarian, but nonetheless transnational. Though basically economic, the transnational community was also political. Capturing a mass base among Chinese overseas was a central strategy of late-Qing dissidents. Crucially, China's early radicals shared a Cantonese origin with their compatriots in Britain, North America, Australia, and elsewhere. The article's findings challenge transnational theories, which stress contemporaneity, economics, and elites. The political cultivation of Chinese in Southeast Asia by Republicans and Communists has been the subject of numerous studies. Far less is known about analogous activities in Europe. By exploring early Republican and Communist influences on the Chinese in Britain, this article traces further paths along which diasporic nationalism spread.     

Are Latin America's corporate elites transnationally interconnected? A network analysis of interlocking directorates

Conflicting perspectives appear when thinking about the emergence of a cohesive transnational corporate network in Latin America. On the one hand, regional political integration, foreign investment growth, increased cross‐border mergers and acquisitions, and cultural and linguistic homogeneity may have fostered transnational networks among Latin America's corporate elites. On the other hand, domestic‐based business groups, family control and trade orientation to the USA may have hindered the emergence of a cohesive transnational corporate network in Latin America. Based on a network analysis of interlocking directorates among the 300 largest corporations in Latin America, I ask whether the region's corporate elites interconnect at the transnational level and form a cohesive transnational corporate network. I found few transnational interlocks, a lack of cohesion in the transnational corporate network and no regional leaders. Corporate elites in Latin America are not transnationally interconnected and so a cohesive transnational corporate network has not emerged. I discuss implications and avenues of future research.     

A Burkean analysis of China Is Not Happy: a rhetoric of nationalism

As a sequel to China Can Say No, China Is Not Happy is the bestseller of 2009 in China. The book praises China's post-80s generation for their act of patriotism, condemns the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, for exploiting the Chinese and for causing a global economic crisis. It also criticizes the Chinese liberal elite and overseas returnees for being Western-influenced mental slaves and traitors. The authors of the book call for an abandonment of “literary tone”, advocate a tough stand against Western countries, and envision China as the leader of the world through its economic and military power. This paper examines the major themes and belligerent rhetoric employed in the book through an application of Kenneth Burke's rhetorical concepts of identification, terministic screens, and representative anecdotes. The author of this paper contends that such use of rhetoric demonstrates the language habit of China's political discourse in its modern history, escalates blind nationalism, and widens the gap in intercultural understanding between China and the US.     

Gendering (Trans)National Advocacy

Whether lauded or deplored, transnational organizing among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) generally, and women's NGOs specifically, is recognized as an active player in debates about international economic policy. In this article, I turn attention toward one consequence of women's transnational NGO organizing that has been under-analyzed: the impact that transnational activism has on domestic political organizations and opportunities. The recent increase in activism on gender and policies of free trade in the USA is the product of women's transnational political organizingover the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the case of NAFTA, theoretical insights about the ways that gendered categories undergird the economy were made visible by and through the transnational advocacy in which feminists engaged.And, this article indicates, these transnational advocacy efforts have helped to shift the domestic political terrain of women's organizing in the United States. I argue that as women's rights advocates in the United States were confronted with the realization that the nexus between gender and trade policy was important to many women's rights and feminist activists around the world, they began to question why the gendered implication of trade policy did not hold a comparable place in the US feminist arena. Thus, changes in the domestic political landscape of non-governmentalactivismmay be one of the longest lasting (and most overlooked) consequences of transnational political engagement.     

The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.     

The politics of a socialist harmonious society in the aftermath of China's neoliberal development

In the aftermath of China's ICT-driven and mass-mediated neoliberal development, the need to reduce China's economic vulnerability to transnational market volatility and to pacify class tensions by improving social justice and redistributing social resources has become urgent. The “socialist harmonious society” concept marks a more sophisticated and socially-oriented mode of governance. By examining two state projects under the auspices of constructing a socialist harmonious society, i.e., the state-endorsed surge of charity activities and the state-subsidized increase of vocational education targeting exclusively rural migrants, this paper argues that these emerging sites of governance, often responding to and defined by China's ICT-driven and mass-mediated neoliberal development, mark the neoliberal restructuring of state activities, and that what distinguishes this new mode of governance is the neoliberal notion of redistribution, which is central to the quasi-inclusive social institutions discussed in this paper.     

Service outsourcing and labour mobility in a digital age: transnational linkages between Japan and Dalian,China

In this article, I examine the transnational mobility of digital workers and the control of their labour across multiple production sites. The digitalization of work has progressively allowed businesses to outsource IT‐enabled service jobs to cheaper production sites offshore. The growth of the ‘offshore outsourcing' of white‐collar service jobs in East Asia has produced the mobility of cheap digital labour from Japan to Dalian in northeast China. They work at call centres and other Japanese‐speaking workplaces in the lower echelons of the city's IT sector, typically earning salaries in Chinese yuan at, or even below, the average Japanese minimum wage. Based on ethnographic findings, I argue that in the global digital economy, digital services are rendered exploitable through their transnational mobility and that this form of labour migration has developed because of the partial, fluid and contingent nature of the transnational links between the two locations. I analyse how the neoliberal logic of exception underpins the creation of IT parks in China and the casualization of labour in Japan to enable new forms of transnational labour control and capital accumulation.     

NGO2.0 and social media praxis: activist as researcher

This article tracks the emergence of a particular brand of ICT activism that promotes the use of social media as a means of helping Chinese NGOs break out of their communication bottleneck. The author starts by introducing NGO2.0, an activist project targeting China's rural regions, using it as an entry point to examine the practice of “social media for social good” and shed light on the ecosystem of social media usage by Chinese NGOs. The author also deliberates on the explanatory value of the binary paradigm of “rural vs. urban,” looks into the methodological implications of undertaking “social media action research,” and articulates what it means to be engaged in the hybrid practice of “activist as scholar” in the specific context of Cultural Studies.     

The Chinese Policy of Highly-Qualified Human Capital: A Strategic Factor for Global Competition in Innovation

International migration is a historical phenomenon, which only recently has gained increasing importance, representing a focal point on the political agenda in most countries. One of the reasons is the deep transformation occurring in last decades, both at global and local level, of the role played by its protagonists that are turning to be transnational agents. This is especially true for the skilled professionals, who migrate internationally. As a matter of fact, international human capital mobility is now regarded as “brain circulation” rather than “brain drain”: this new concept concerns individuals who maintain frequent and continued social, economic and political ties with their country of origin, exceeding thereby the territorial and cultural boundaries. In this scenario, China is one of the main sending countries of highly-skilled migrants, through which it can built economic and academic relations with other economic and technological advanced countries. Recently, Chinese policy makers have started to consider the brain drain phenomenon as an opportunity for the transmission of business and technological know-how, as well as tacit knowledge that is hard to find through official channels. This article intends to contribute to the scientific debate on the subject, highlighting the international relevance of the so-called Overseas Chinese Professionals (OCPs), investigating their spatial distribution and features. Besides, the paper will examine the emerging returning flow and the challenge that the country will have to cope with in the next future to impose itself as a innovative leading economy.     

News‐Media and Terrorism: Changing Relationship,Changing Definitions

This article discusses two aspects that are important for understanding the relationship between Western news media and terrorism: the changing representation of terrorists and terrorist attacks in the media and, with it, the changing definition of terrorism. By calling attention to evolving news media practices in times of terrorism, I argue that advanced communication technologies and the emergence of global media ecology since the 1990s has made terrorism more visible in both national and international media landscapes. One result is that the more the news media expose terrorism to global audiences via the “front door,” the more controversial the use of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” become in social, political, and scholarly discourses. The paper addresses the evolving journalistic practices and their consequences as documented in previous studies on media reporting of terrorism in several national contexts, mostly the UK, the United States, and Israel.     

“Changing the world”: epistemic communities,and the democratizing power of science

This paper puts forward the argument that science can not only “save the world” but also “change the world.” While much has been written about the evident power of science to bring politicians to change their policies in order to “save the world,” e.g. the environment, less attention has been drawn on the hidden power of science to “change the world,” i.e. to frame and shape political orders and constituencies so that they get more democratic in the deliberative sense of the term, both at international and domestic scales. The paper sheds light on how science can induce democratizing effects in domestic constituencies. It can do that by the intermediary of three distinct enumerative mechanisms: “teaching,” “empowering,” and “taming.” These mechanisms, it is argued, are especially likely to become effective in those transnational institutional settings linking scientists and technical experts on the one side, with political and societal actors, on the other side, or in what Haas calls “epistemic communities.”     

Transnational Normative Struggles and Globalization: The Case of Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador

Since the 1990s, the indigenous rights movement has catapulted from resource-poor, local activists to global activists. The rise of transnational indigenous rights movements has paralleled and interfaced with significant structural developments at the international and state-systemic level, raising questions about the interplay between global and local politics as arenas of social change. To trace these transnational networks to the articulation of norms supportive of indigenous claims, we examine two cases of transnational indigenous activism and domestic responses in the Andean region of South America. We find that the additional dimension of domestic and transnational mobilization that first contests existing international norms, such as neoliberalism and individual rights, and then seeks to diffuse normative changes at both the domestic and international levels provides new insight about norm formation, transformation, and diffusion in international politics in favor of anti-globalization and community equality norms on local, national, and global levels.     

China and global internet governance: toward an alternative analytical framework

Drawing on historical methods, this study assesses the conventional “cyber-sovereignty” framework, which has been used to capture and interpret China’s stance toward global Internet governance. This framework focuses on political control and tends to reduce China’s policies to the attempts by an authoritarian state to elevate governments and intergovernmental organizations to be the only legitimate governors of global cyberspace. As it traces the evolution of China’s relationship with the global Internet in the past three decades, the study demonstrates that China’s stance is more complex than the prevalent framework allows and that it is both built upon and different from the US-centric, market-oriented Internet governance scheme. This study recognizes the inadequacy of the conventional framework and invokes a theory of critical political economy of communication, thereby offering an alternative model to explicate the complex power dynamics behind China’s changing strategies. The alternative model advanced in this study is based on the understanding of China’s evolving approach as the product of multifaceted interactions among a group of power-holders that include both state agencies and business units on the transnational level.