Framing Robert W. Cox,Framing International Relations

Abstract

In the recent years, R.W. Cox has distanced himself from some genealogical connections made by his followers in regard to what he meant in his famous 1981 article. Was he mischaracterized, framed? This paper focuses on how Cox has been ‘framed’, a concept elaborated and used across social sciences in different contexts. Here, it is used to look at different mechanisms by which ideas, such as those of Cox, can be connected, ‘framed’ to other ideas, not only to advance knowledge but to strengthen individual careers, to strengthen and construct approaches and disciplines. Framing highlights and creates a space but also constrains and obscures. Cox deserves to be seen outside any frames other than the one he creates for himself, one which is changing and developing as does the real world, not captive to any approach, paradigm, discipline, or any other frame.     

Framing the Self

The meaning of a photograph depends on the story we tell about it. In the case of portraits, these narrative frames shape the self we impute to the sitter. The interiority of the portrait subject, the inner character we imagine is revealed in the photograph, is a result of what we know about photographic portraits, about the sitter, about the photographer, and about the context in which the image was made. Likewise in everyday life, the selves we impute to others are infected by similar processes of narrative framing. Who we are known to be depends not only on self‐presentations but on the stories within which those self‐presentations are placed.     

Media Framing of Trafficking

This article explores meaning-making processes around human trafficking, using the empirical example of the Slovene press. The analysis pinpoints how the topic appears in the media, what content emphases it receives in reporting, which aspects are dealt with and which are absent, and the implications of such framing. My reading of newspaper articles shows how trafficking appears within ‘frames’ that I label ‘criminalization’, ‘nationalization’, ‘victimization’ and ‘regularization’; together, these help to shape a specific anti-trafficking paradigm, one that depicts trafficking as a criminal issue and calls for stricter policing, saving victims and tightening borders. The frames as they appear in the Slovene press are unpacked here with the purpose of opening up space for understandings of trafficking that go beyond predominant representations.     

Framing the image of Sikkim

This article highlights the poetics and politics of visual culture and specifically tourist brochures and picture postcards that frame an indigenous Buddhist Sikkim for domestic and international tourists. Located in Northeast India, Himalayan Sikkim is a cultural mosaic constituted by almost 22 Indo-Tibetan and Indo-Aryan groups residing therein. It is argued that visual representations incisively frame Sikkim as a Buddhist landscape by selectively photographing mantras, sacred texts, saints, religious sites, murals and rituals that are connected with Buddhism. The growing efflorescence of Buddhism globally and the desire of tourists to experience Buddhist culture has given fresh impetus to imagining Sikkim as their living repository.     

Framing youth issues for public support

The insights from one state illustrate the challenges of working to shape public will to favor support for out-of-school learning opportunities for youth ages nine to fifteen. With the leadership of the Frameworks Institute, local and national research and refraining concepts were used to develop a strategy to help advocates communicate the value of these learning opportunities in ways the public is less likely to dismiss out of hand. Messages reinforcing the developmental need to practice skills using the illustration of brain architecture and emphasizing the important role of community contribution on future leadership proved to be important aspects of the communication strategy.     

Framing Greater France Between The Wars

This essay analyzes the relationship between France as an imperial nation-state and the discourse of Greater France that intensified during the interwar period. I am interested in the way that the figure of Greater France sought to stage and reconcile – not justify, rationalize, or mystify – structural contradictions between republican and imperial systems of government. I argue that there is an intrinsic relationship between colonial discourse and its corresponding political form. By posing questions about the status we assign to colonial ideology through the analysis of a series of influential colonial texts, this essay pays special attention to the dissociation of nationality and citizenship that characterized a political form composed of a metropolitan parliamentary government articulated with a colonial administrative regime. I hope to reframe the familiar discussion of the proliferating representations of empire that circulated in metropolitan France after World War One. The figure of la plus grande France that developed then allows us to interrogate the French imperial nation-state at a doubly paradoxical historical conjuncture characterized by the consolidation of both the republic and the empire, on the one hand, and by unprecedented crises of the republic and colonial legitimacy, on the other. Interwar imperialism produced qualitative and evaluative distinctions between different French colonies but I will focus on the more general conceptions of the empire as such that circulated through the discourse of Greater France.     

Framing Sectarianism in the Middle East

This paper argues that a long view perspective of contemporary sectarianism between Sunni and Shia Islam in the Middle East could be read on the background of earlier forms of sectarianism going back to the 19^th and 20^th century history of the region. Such an approach would disentangle sectarianism from primordial narratives as an intrinsic problem of Islam going back to the early schism of the 7^th century and place it in social formations and social practices, and link it to the emergence of sectarianism during the Ottoman age of reforms. It would explicit arguments that link sectarianism with modernism, discussing how the emergence of modern, secular institutions that were based in early-modern millet system led to sects and sectarianism. The outcome of this approach is conceptualization of sect and sectarianism, its categorization, and confronting it with other modern narratives of the history of the Middle East.     

Framing the Picture of the Child

The paper studies the forms that are used in planning for a child’s early childhood education and care in Finnish day care from the perspectives of social constructionism and discourse analysis. It asks how childhood is conceptualised in these forms and what are the social functions of early childhood education and care as implied in the conceptualisations. The paper shows that the conceptions of childhood and the understanding of the functions of early childhood education and care are mostly in unison and are rooted in traditional discourses, approaches and practices of Finnish day care. Consequently, the child’s view and the child as an agent in her/his world are not present in the forms.     

Framing and immigration through the trump era

For the last decade, undocumented or illegal immigration has been one of the most contested policy issues in the United States, with significant news attention on policies affecting the undocumented population, ranging from deportations to comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite these prominent and multifaceted policy debates, scholarship on media framing and public opinion remain more focused on the portrayal of immigrants rather than policies affecting them. In general, scholars find that policy frames are far more consequential to public opinion than equivalency frames (variations in how news media describe unauthorized immigrants, either as “illegal” or “undocumented”) or episodic frames (whether news articles are heavy on human‐interest stories rather than policy facts and statistics). Also, negative frames generally have stronger effects than positive frames, and these effects sometimes vary by partisanship and family migration history. Finally, the relative infrequency of powerful frames in news stories, like a life spent in the United States, provides opportunities for advocates to move public opinion on immigration policy. These findings have important implications for future battles over immigration policy in the United States, which show no signs of abating.     

Framing Immigration News in Spanish Regional Press

In this paper, an exploratory content analysis has been developed for a case study on the topic of immigration reported in the regional newspapers of the largest Spanish autonomous community, Castilla and Leon. This study based its research conceptualization on the framing theory in mass communication. In addition to usual issue frames and issue images, two framing devices were established for analytic variables ‐‐ the index of importance and the index of affective attribute. They formed a frame package capable of making latent frames evident by their linkage to manifest frames. Comparing to the general assumption of relevant‐bad‐news production, results obtained in this study proved that, on occasion, negative news stories could be reported as less relevant than the positive ones. The outcomes also show how concept mapping of frames was applicable to immigration issues and immigrants’ visual aspects of immigrant communities that were systematically articulated and disseminated by the press in this regional society of Spain.     

Framing Public Discussion of Gay Civil Unions

Although the framing of public opinion has often been conceptualizedas a collective and social process, experimental studies offraming have typically examined only individual, psychologicalresponses to alternative message frames. In this research weemploy for the first time group conversations as the unit ofanalysis (following Gamson 1992) in an experimental study offraming effects. Two hundred and thirty-five American citizensin 50 groups (17 homo-geneously conservative groups, 15 homogeneouslyliberal groups, and 18 heterogeneous groups) discussed whetheror not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized.Groups were randomly assigned to one of two framing conditions(a "homosexual marriage/special rights" frame or a "civil union/equalrights" frame). Results indicated framing effects that were,in all cases, contingent on the ideological leanings of thegroup. The "marriage" frame tended to polarize group discussionsalong ideological lines. Both liberal and conservative groupsappeared to find their opponents’ frame more provocative,responding to them with a larger number of statements and expressinggreater ambivalence than when reacting to more hospitable frames.     

Framing the rabbit to snare the votes

Results in cognitive psychology and experimental economics suggest that people are prone to systematic misperception of policy. This paper embodies voters’ misperceptions of policy into a standard political economy framework with complete information, and examines whether and to what extent political parties may use this misperception to manipulate voters and derive political gains. We analyze the equilibria and welfare implications for different setups. A payroll tax incidence detailed example is used to illustrate the framework. The paper is based in part on a chapter in the second author’s Ph.D. dissertation. The authors wish to thank Elhanan Helpman, seminar participants in Silvaplana and Bonn University and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. The authors are grateful for financial assistance by the Sapir Fund.     

Framing nursing practice within a forensic outpatient service

The role of the outpatient forensic nurse is evolving as a specialized area of nursing practice in the community. Nurses must have comprehensive knowledge of the patients, keen intuition, and sound judgment in the continuous clinical assessment of the criminogenic factors that help determine the patients' level of risk. In addition, it is crucial to know and understand the court system, the process of the ORB, and the implications of the disposition order. The comprehensive, client-centered care provided by the Forensic Outpatient Service encompasses multifunctional and complex roles and responsibilities and clearly demonstrates the importance of the forensic outpatient nurse in working with this group of patients.     

Framing Black women: The utility of knowledge

This article reviews the literature on the socially constructed knowledge or myths about Black women by placing it within a cultural context. I identify three domains of research within this field. The first is the cultural production of socially constructed mythologies of Black women throughout various historical epochs, which includes an analysis of books, journals, scientific/medical documents, images, and other cultural products. I focus on two primary categories of stereotypes found in the literature: 1.) the myth of pathology and primitiveness and 2.) the myth of antithetical womanhood. The second is the utility of cultural knowledge—which is to control and regulate culture and to justify and establish particular types of norms, preferences, laws, policies, and practices within society. Lastly, I will discuss the resistance culture of Black women, which developed in response to stereotypical perceptions created about them.