Harnessing Fortune: Personhood,Memory, and Place in Mongolia by Rebecca M. Empson

ABSTRACT

Since the change of regimes in 1989, private property has become the symbol of the new era in the postsocialist part of Europe—an ideological tool as well as a vessel for creating and realizing identities. For young people in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, buying an apartment is the most common way to secure one's housing. However, it is accompanied by personal sacrifices and debt, resulting in uncertainties for many years to come. Therefore, the decision whether to buy or rent significantly influences young people's modes of life. Nevertheless, securing one's housing is not solely an economic question, but also a part of an intimate process of creating a personal space. To feel at home means to make it one's own, hence to dive into the process of constant re-negotiation. The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between property relations and the process of creating a home. The research data originates from intensive year-long qualitative fieldwork with thirty-five informants in Bratislava. As the results show, in a postsocialist society of uncertainties, private property is conceptualized as a personal goal and point of stability, but it also adds specific tensions and dilemmas to the notion of home. In relation to this, both home and property are parts of the same ongoing process of appropriation—influenced by preferences in taste, ideal notions, and social aspirations, as well as by broader social and economic factors.     

Reason's other: the emergence of the disabled subject in the Northern renaissance

By the late fifteenth century, the debate over the role of reason and the constitution of the human subject freed public discourse from its reliance on God and placed the rational individual at the centre of social and political thought. The emphasis on rationality necessitated a parallel discourse on its opposite—‘reason’s Other'. In this period, representations of disabled people change in response to this new paradigm. Late medieval cultural documents, such as those of Brant and Bosch, employ folly as a metaphorical device, associated with the qualities of Everyman. However, with the rise of renaissance humanism, the benign metaphors of folly associated with the abstract everyman quickly become inscribed on the bodies of those people who would be constructed as reason's ‘Other’—people with intellectual and physical disabilities—and the abstract discourse of folly is transformed into a much more direct representational association of disability with depravity.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! … the paragon of animals! Hamlet II.ii     

Unofficial Hanoians: Migration,Native Place and Urban Citizenship in Vietnam

Independent migration to Hanoi has surged dramatically over two decades of deepening market reforms, blurring the distinctions between urban and rural lives once maintained so carefully by the Communist Party of Vietnam. However many urban migrants face ongoing legal and social obstacles in Hanoi, tied to an outmoded system of household registration (ho khau), and widespread anxieties about the ‘floating population’ threatening to overwhelm the city. This article shows how one group of ‘unofficial Hanoians’—migrant motorbike taxi drivers from Nam Dinh Province—navigate a system of differentiated urban citizenship by forging communities and mutual assistance networks around shared ‘native places’ (que huong) to find employment, housing and social support in the city. It also reveals how Hanoi's marginal urban spaces—home to entrenched migrant communities of ambiguous legality—emerge as key arenas in the negotiation of Vietnamese citizenship, forcing national leaders, city officials, landlords and residents to grapple with questions of free movement and the rights of rural citizens to transgress urban space.     

‘It's [the] Culture,Stupid!’ Why ‘Adding Culture’ is Unlikely to Make Any Serious Difference to International Developmentalism

What major difference adding an extra ingredient—‘culture’—may make to a standard concoction—‘international developmentalism’—depends in part on how friendly the concoction is to what is to be added—and (with apologies to Jan Nederveen Pieterse) stirred. Therefore any hopes for any cultural re-turn in development studies should not neglect their cognitive iconography and the obstacles this may pose to what is desired. Six strands in the iconography of international developmentalism are highlighted in this paper: its high doctrine/low scholarship character, appetite for single best-fitting regression-type modelling and die-hard positivism, reliance on lethal binaries that kill existential and practical concerns, disposition to ready-made solutions in search of problems to attach themselves to, and ‘no politics please we are experts’ stances.     

Collaborative Influence

Collaborative therapists acknowledge their role in influencing clients and the outcomes of therapy. But the word ‘influence’, for many new to the collaborative therapies, can be mistakenly connoted as an undue exercise of therapist power. From a dialogic and social constructionist perspective, this article reflects on how therapists can be influential in collaborative ways. Negotiating ‘shared intentionalities’ with clients, while privileging their preferences in meaning‐making and change—as part of respecting their primary authorship over their lives—assists therapists to employ their influence in ways that stay collaborative. Furthermore, by regarding client ‘resistance’ and misunderstanding as instructive, therapists can enhance their efforts to stay collaborative.     

The Doing and Undoing of Gender: The Importance of Being a Credible Female Victim

It is increasingly argued that gender is something we ‘do’ (or ‘undo’) rather than ‘are’. The doing of gender, or the accomplishment of gender, becomes credible when it conforms (in broad terms) to certain normative conceptions of gender. Resistance to, or subversions of these norms, or the failure to appear credible, deny the individual a gendered authenticity. Attempts to unshackle notions of gender — to ‘undo gender’ and to accept the outcome as authentic, open and fluid — have been matched with concerns that this theoretically empowering process may result in the loss of political power — the notion of woman (or man) in whose name we can act being lost as the binary is eliminated. These tensions are explored in the context of the UK Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (rev. 1986) . This article demonstrates how the doing and undoing of gender in an employment tribunal accomplishes or negates the ‘authenticity’ of gender.     

A feminist perspective on COVID‐19 and the value of care work globally

The shared response to the COVID‐19 crisis demonstrates that the vast majority of society believes human wellbeing — not economic growth — should be at the centre of policy. COVID‐19 exposes the foundational role of care work, both paid and unpaid, to functioning societies and economies. Focusing on ‘production’ instead of the sustainable reproduction of human life devalues care work and those who perform it. Women’s physical and mental health, and the societies that rely on them, are at stake. When these policies are formulated, the field of feminist economics has valuable lessons for mitigating hardships as countries navigate the related economic fallout. A comprehensive response to the COVID‐19 crisis must recognize this gendered work as an integral part of the economic system that promotes human wellbeing for all.     

Trotsky’s error: multiplicity and the secret origins of revolutionary Marxism

ABSTRACT

Uneven and Combined Development uniquely incorporated societal multiplicity into Marxist theory. So why did its first application end in Stalinist dictatorship? This paper seeks an answer by turning the idea back on itself, applying it first to Trotsky’s doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’ and then to Marx’s original idea of revolution. Trotsky hoped that Russia’s ‘revolution of backwardness’ would be rescued by ‘advanced’ revolutions in the West, modelled on the French revolution. But what if – as this paper argues – that event too was ultimately a ‘revolution of backwardness’? Two implications follow. First, Trotsky’s ‘permanentist’ strategy was logically flawed: if all modern revolutions have been internationally-generated catch-up revolutions, then the idea of Bolshevism being rescued by ‘advanced revolutions’ elsewhere fails. But second, the consequences of multiplicity reach even deeper than Trotsky realized: they underlie and explain the original political formation, and troubled history, of revolutionary Marxism itself.     

Attending to the world: competition,cooperation and connectivity in the World City network

World Cities are acknowledged to be a key aspect of globalization. In many accounts, these cities are depicted as rivals in a global marketplace, their economic success a result of their competitive advantage. However, what has not been fully acknowledged is their connectivity and, in addition, the time and effort taken by specific ‘attendants’ to produce the World City network. Accordingly, this article aims to advance understanding of World City network formation by developing a conceptual model that focuses on four major attendants (firms, sectors, cities and states) that enact network formation through two nexuses —‘city‐firm’ and ‘statesector’— and two communities —‘cities within states’ and ‘firms within sectors’. The utility of this model is demonstrated by drawing upon interviews conducted in offices of 39 advanced producer service firms in banking and law. These interviews were undertaken in three World Cities (London, New York and Singapore) in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis, an event that challenged the consistency of the World City network. Showing how attendants sought to maintain and transform the World City network at this key moment of crisis, we conclude that studies of city competitiveness ultimately need to focus on the cooperative work that sustains global networks.     

Testing the validity of social capital measures in the study of information and communication technologies

Social capital has been considered a cause and consequence of various uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is a growing divergence between how social capital is commonly measured in the study of ICTs and how it is measured in other fields. This departure raises questions about the validity of some of the most widely cited studies of social capital and ICTs. We compare the Internet Social Capital Scales (ISCS) developed by Williams [2006. On and off the ’net: scales for social capital in an online era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 593–628. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00029.x] – a series of psychometric scales commonly used to measure ‘social capital’ – to established, structural measures of social capital: name, position, and resource generators. Based on a survey of 880 undergraduate students (the population to which the ISCS has been most frequently administered), we find that, unlike structural measures, the ISCS does not distinguish between the distinct constructs of bonding and bridging social capital. The ISCS does not have convergent validity with structural measures of bonding or bridging social capital; it does not measure the same concept as structural measures. The ISCS conflates social capital with the related constructs of social support and attachment. The ISCS does not measure perceived or actual social capital. These findings raise concerns about the interpretations of existing studies of ‘social capital’ and ICTs that are based on the ISCS. Given the absence of measurement validity, we urge those studying social capital to abandon the ISCS in favor of alternative approaches.     

Globalization and cultural mediation: the construction of Arabia in London

The Arab Gulf’s relationship to London epitomizes the processes of globalization i.e. flows of people, images, ideas and wealth beyond national borders. The rise of oil wealth in the mid–1970s financed the growth of London as a centre of Gulf Cooperation Council–funded Arab cultural production. The British capital’s populations of ex–servicemen, former diplomats and Middle Eastern immigrants serve as ‘third culture’ mediators. Often well educated, well heeled and well connected, these intermediaries possess the social position and cultural know–how to play a central role in the construction and marketing of Gulf Arab local culture and heritage. Romantic notions of Gulf Arab cultural particularism feature prominently in mediators’ products and activities. In the case of Arab London’s mediation industries, globalization results not in cultural homogenization, but rather in the (re)production and commodification of reified notions of cultural difference.     

Recycled Odyssey: Creating Transnational Families in The Greek Diaspora

In this article I explore the types of transnational families forged by Greek Canadian women through cycles of migration between Canada and Greece. The focus is on how transmigrant women search for a spouse and heterosexual lifestyle embodied within a seemingly ‘authentic’ Greek experience. This recycled odyssey in which the women negotiate systems of gender and ethnic identification between two different social milieux highlights how parental guidance, class tensions and representations of gender and sexuality (re)form the Greek transnational family. These conflicts, and their resolutions, indicate how the ties of transnational families are negotiated to accommodate competing notions of sexuality, femininity, filial piety, parental investment and economic responsibility. Such cases are poorly documented since it is assumed that ‘white’ ethnic groups in North America are more assimilated. However, given the forces that drive transnationalism — such as global capital, cheap travel, telecommunications and European integration — belonging to an imagined community has different implications than it did in the past.     

Changes in the Political Iconography of East Central European Capitals after 1989 (Berlin,Warsaw, Prague,Bratislava)

The fall of communism in 1989/1990 has led not only to the establishment of new political systems and ideologies, but also to significant modifications in the visual self-representation of the respective states in Eastern and East Central Europe. Statues of communist heroes were abolished and replaced by monuments and memorials reflecting the new political situation. New state buildings were erected, and the old ones remodelled and adapted to the representational needs of the new authorities. In some cases, the political changes even have had a strong impact on principles of city planning, effecting urban structures of symbolic value.

The focal points of these developments are the capital cities, being principal places of the execution of state power as well as of its self-representation. However, the conditions for the staging of the state in the capital are in each case different. They depend on one hand on the architectural shape and historic role of the city, and on the political situation and self-image of the state on the other.

The article provides a comparative analysis of the changes in the political iconography of four East Central European capitals—Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava—since 1989, focusing on selected monuments, architectural projects for state institutions and concepts of town planning.     

In the Long Run We Are all Dead: Hey Keynes, What Is Long in the Contemporary US Case?

The idea of declinism of the US had emerged in every decade after the World War Two and so it was as well after the end of the Cold War. The article argues that such a phenomenon may be attributed to the nature of the international system, where through the globalization the US enables ‘the rest’ to grow on its expense. China and other export led economies, made great benefit of the US open market that is functioning as a ‘big vacuum cleaner’. The focal question of article is two-folded: first, is ‘the raise of the rest’ causing the geoeconomic centre of power to shift from the Atlantic to Pacific; second, is the US in decline? Article presents economic data that show that there are no economic incentives for the geoeconomic shift. The geopolitical centre may indeed by shifting, but not due to the geoeconomic reasons, but rather due to military, political, and ideological power factors. The US has been in relative decline since the end of the WW2—other international actors seized the chance that the international system created by the US provided. Thus, the relevant question about declinism is—is the US in absolute decline? The article argues that the 2008 financial shock was not cyclical in nature, but rather systemic. It is the first time since the WW2 that the US was unable to answer to the challenge adequately. The main reason for that is not external, namely, the relative decline of the US—G8 was replaced by G20—but internal—the US is not tackling the core of its systemic economic problem. This suggests that the US is marching towards an absolute decline. To avoid its demise, the US has to change its Keynesian pragmatic short-sighted economic mentality and do the well needed structural reforms.     

At the intersection of idealized youth and marginalized almost-adulthood: how girls negotiate young motherhood in London,Ontario

This article discusses how young mothers in London, a mid-size city in Canada, utilize a drop-in centre service while attending an alternative programme to acquire secondary school credits. The central arguments made here are informed by key concepts in the field of girlhood studies. With its attention to the interconnections between gender, age, and generation as well as other aspects of social identity, girlhood studies provides crucial insight into the lived experiences of young mothers who straddle the space between girlhood and adulthood. We interpret the experiences of the young mothers who participated in this study in light of shifting meanings and expectations of girls and girlhood in the neoliberal era. Drawing on the concept of the ideal neoliberal girl subject embodied in the ‘can do’ and ‘at risk’ girl, this paper highlights the tensions in accessing a drop-in centre, which functions as both a site of security and surveillance, for a group of young mothers receiving social services. The findings revealed how girls who are mothers struggle to live in the present to assert a legitimate maternal identity even as they are prepared for the future through neoliberal public policies and other disciplinary practices.     

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

In this article, we contribute to debates on how social networks sustain migrants' entrepreneurial activities. By reporting on 31 interviews with Eastern European migrants in the UK, we provide a critical lens on the tendency to assume that migrants have ready‐made social networks in the host country embedded in co‐ethnic communities. We extend this limited perspective by demonstrating how Eastern European migrants working in the UK transform blat social networks, formulated in the cultural and political contours of Soviet society, in their everyday lived experiences. Our findings highlight not only the monetarization of such networks but also the continuing embedded nature of trust existing within these networks, which cut across transnational spaces. We show how forms of social capital based on Russian language use and legacies of a shared Soviet past, are just as important as the role of ‘co‐ethnics’ and ‘co‐migrants’ in facilitating business development. In doing so, we present a more nuanced understanding of the role that symbolic capital plays in migrant entrepreneurial journeys and its multifaceted nature.     

Moving images: world cities,connections and projects in Sydney's TV production industry

World city research concerned with connectivity has tended to focus on advanced producer service firms and on selected North American and European cities; the prevailing methodology has been quantitative. In this article I answer the call to ‘go beyond counting’ by bringing together a project‐based enquiry — on a TV mini‐series Mary Bryant— with a more conventional assessment of network connectivity. The inclusion of a practice‐centred approach to this case study adds the performative data to the network, highlighting the actions and processes of those involved in maintaining the city networks. Furthermore, I demonstrate how this method of analysis is more suited to the study of project‐based cultural industries and highlight the role of Sydney in the global television industry — a city hitherto under‐explored in world city literature.     

Global Governance,neoliberalism and national responses: The case of Bangladesh’s ready‐made garment (RMG) sector

This article on the ready‐made garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh shows how over‐reliance on foreign capital for development financing and deregulated investment—a hallmark of neoliberal economic arrangements—undermines the incorporation of SDGs’ and INGOs’ equity principles, contributing to biased policy responses yielding unequal outcomes. The article cautions that while countries prioritize economic growth over social and environmental nourishment and continue to adopt neoliberal economic policies to promote economic growth, inequity is unavoidable, if not inevitable. Thus, the way forward may be to shift the focus of ‘development’ from the economy to society, to building ‘good societies’ where institutions and strategies, including those that contribute to economic growth, are organized such that these complement not compromise the evolution of such societies.     

America in the Psyche of Bangla Authors: Opening of the Space by Tagore

The essay, divided into five sections, explores how the Cultural Space called ‘America’ (and ‘Americanism’) are reflected in the works of a far-away literary-cultural community called Bangla (or Bengali) in South Asia, and how this inter-relationship was strengthened by Rabindranath Tagore. It begins with the post-Tagore post-WWII literary scene where America occurs as a backdrop and then touches upon Tagore’s contemporaries who referred to America. But it focuses on how Tagore, in his polemical writing, views the role of America in the international arena, or how he conceptualises Indo-American relations while commenting on American Society and its beliefs and practices — especially how it handles linguistic plurality, majority-minority relationships, and less-privileged groups. In particular, it discusses the concepts such as Individuality, Plurality, Diversity, Liberty and Civilization — all relevant for foreign policy initiatives then as well as now, and how America is viewed as a land of promise and opportunity.