The Real Crisis at the Mexico-U.S. Border: A Humanitarian and Not an Immigration Emergency

Misguided U.S. policies since 1980 have created a large undocumented population within the United States. Border militarization curtailed circular undocumented migration from Mexico, and Cold War politics precluded the acceptance of refugees from Central America fleeing violence and economic turmoil unleashed by America’s intervention in the region. Although undocumented migration from Mexico has ended, resources devoted to border apprehensions and internal deportations continue to rise, pushing an ever larger number of Central Americans into an immigrant detention system that is ill-equipped to handle them. Although the Trump administration portrays the situation as an immigration crisis, what is really unfolding along the border and within the United States is an unprecedented humanitarian cross that in so many ways is one of our own making.     

The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Response to Peak Oil

ABSTRACT

After the two-fold crises of the liberal world order in the first decade of the twenty-first century, including the debacle of the Global War on Terror and the global financial crisis around 2008, we are witnessing a combined crisis of US hegemony and the transnational moment, along with the explosion of populism across the Atlantic world. In this context, this research not only analyses how the United States has designed and maintained the liberal interstate order and globalization but also the way the hegemon proactively starts to destroy its cross-national project today. Therefore, I aim to fathom the future of globalization by interrogating the current US state's key strategies that express America's changing national identity and self-role conception under shifting structural imperatives from unipolarity to the emerging multipolar world.     

From Limited to Active Engagement: Mexico’s Emigration Policies from a Foreign Policy Perspective (2000–2006)

Mexico’s emigration policies – including the state’s engagement with the diaspora, the discourse in relation to emigrants, the responses to U.S. migration policies and legislation, and the priority given to the issue in the national and bilateral agendas – have undergone a process of transformation since the late 1980s and particularly after 2000. From a history of generally limited engagement in terms of responding to U.S. policies and a traditional interpretation of consular protection activities, Mexico has gradually developed more active policies in relation to the diaspora and began a process of redefining its position on emigration. In addition to the processes of political change in Mexico and the growing impact of migrants’ transnational activities, changes in Mexico’s emigration policies are also a result of transformations in foreign policy principles and strategies, mainly as a result of the evolution of U.S.‐Mexico relations since the late 1980s and particularly since NAFTA. These findings demonstrate the significance of international factors – namely host state – sending state relations and foreign policy interests, discourse, and traditions – in the design and implementation of migration policies and the need to develop multi‐level analyses to explain states’ objectives, interests, and capacities in the management of migration.     

Explaining the United States’ Penal Exceptionalism: Political,Economic, and Social Factors

In this review, I examine explanations for why the United States is a world leader in its use of imprisonment. I first outline cross‐national trends in incarceration and then evaluate the state of the literature and empirical evidence for why the United States is more punitive than other advanced industrialized nations. I argue a confluence of political, economic, and social factors distinct to the United States context are implicated in the punitive turn in the 1970s. Specifically, United States’ penal exceptionalism is the result of (1) a shift of criminal justice policy from the judicial to the legislative branch of government; (2) political responses to social and economic changes including deindustrialization and the upheaval of race relations in the 1960s; and (3) a weak welfare state. These changes stand in stark contrast to the dynamics of criminal justice policymaking among comparable nations. However, there is a need for more comparative research on the topic, as understanding the mechanism behind the stabilization or decrease of penal populations in other countries may better elucidate the reasons for America’s divergence from international trends.     

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

Visualities of strategic vision: Lookout Mountain Laboratory and the deterrent state from nuclear tests to Vietnam

This article considers two visual cultures of America’s deterrent state in the Cold War, the cinematic and cybernetic, by following the history of the 600th Photographic Squadron of the United States (US) Air Force in Vietnam and its 1950s progenitor, the 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron, or Lookout Mountain Laboratory. We argue that cinematic and cybernetic visual cultures were at the heart of a Cold War visual alliance that was also a Cold War visual contest, and cameras were situated at the centre of the contest. Specifically, the cinematic and the cybernetic represent two distinct visualities of vision, as the Cold War cameras of the Air Force assumed either transcendental or transcendent positions. The former, in keeping with a cinematic visuality, was oriented towards casting America as a sight to see in the context of its war on communism, with cameras operating as a condition of possibility for the construction of the ‘image’, whereas the latter, in keeping with a cybernetic visuality, was oriented towards the American appetite to see, to monitor and survey the world over, with cameras operating as processors of ‘information’. The history of the 600th Photographic Squadron and its progenitor, Lookout Mountain Laboratory, suggests that the transition from cinematic to cybernetic visualities of vision was part of a broader transformation in the US Cold War state from a nuclear deterrent state to a supra-nuclear deterrent state.     

The Changing Valuation of Dogs1

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed profound changes in the sociocultural valuation of dogs, variously described as humanization, sentimentalization, or sacralization. A broad look at this “sacralization” of dogs in the United States reveals that this changing valuation has altered dogs’ place within economic processes. In particular, these changes parallel Viviana Zelizer’s work on the changing valuation of children a century ago. In this article, we further specify Zelizer’s insights by arguing that these accompanying economic transformations are best understood as shifting of a dogs’ place within budgetary units: from objects for human consumption to fellow actors humans consume with and around.     

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

The term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.     

Military Brides and Refugees: Vietnamese American Wives and Shifting Links to the Military, 1980 – 2000

Since the immigration legislation of 1965, marriage to American citizens and resident aliens has been one of the primary paths for migration to the United States. Despite the rapid growth of the Asian American population over the course of the late twentieth century, Asian Americans had still reached only 3 per cent of all Americans by 2000, meaning that Asian marriage migration to the United States has been largely through marriage to non‐Asians. In this study, we look at exogamy among Vietnamese Americans using U. S. Census data (1980, 1990, and 2000) from 5 per cent PUMS sets made available through the IPUMS project. We ask: (1) What are the predictors of exogamy among Vietnamese Americans? (2) How do the rates of exogamy of Vietnamese American women compare to those of Vietnamese American men? (3) How have the predictors of exogamy and the apparent characteristics of the exogamously married changed over the decades of refugee movement from Vietnam to North America? We review data from the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. In the assimilationist view of immigration associated with the classic work of Milton M. Gordon, exogamy is the final stage of immigrant incorporation into a host country. Migration through marriage, which has become a major source of immigration to the United States since the Immigration Act of 1965, reverses this assimilationist pattern, placing marriage before immigration and incorporation, or at the earliest stages of immigration and incorporation. Our findings are relevant to understanding the specific Vietnamese experience in the United States. They highlight the continuing but declining importance of the Vietnam War in creating close connections between Vietnamese and other people in the United States, even after the war had ended. The findings also suggest how these connections changed as a result of Vietnamese mass migration to America.     

民间外交:未来更具人文性的全球化之选择

维基解密网站泄密事件发生后,美国等西方国家的官方外交一度受挫。本文认为,官方外交遭遇危机或陷入僵局时,民间外交可对各个国家和民族的交往发挥积极作用,通过各类媒体以及依靠与非政府组织的合作寻求各国各民族间的合作点,有助于拓宽民间组织在全球范围内的交流与合作。在信息革命与全球化时代,应最大限度地利用各类民间渠道开展民间外交,参与维护国内稳定和世界和平,致力于克服以美国为首的"野蛮全球化"所建立的官方外交中存在的各种弊端,构建一种更具人文性的全球化蓝图。     

The global animus: in the tracks of world consciousness

In recent years, much has been made of the idea that under conditions of globalization, more and more people in different parts of the planet conceive of themselves as part of a ‘global society’ or ‘global culture’. Often it has been alleged that forms of consciousness centred around a disposition to see one's own life as a single part of the ‘world as a whole’ are relatively recent products. In this paper we argue that such tendencies, or something very much like them, in fact were present in the ancient Mediterranean world. We examine how ways of thinking and feeling, that bear in certain ways close correspondence to modern ideas as to ‘globality’, were prevalent amongst certain social groups in the Roman empire. Those persons regarded themselves as part of a world that was rapidly shrinking through increasing levels of political, commercial and other modes of interconnection between its geographically disparate parts. By examining these ancient attitudes, we demonstrate an important aspect of the pre-history of modern sensibilities as to the nature of a ‘globalizing/globalized world’. Moreover, by attending to ancient evidence as to ‘global’ attitudes and ‘global consciousness’, one may begin to overcome the presentism implicit in many contemporary accounts of globalization.     

埃及“7·3”事件后美国对埃援助政策研究

埃及被认为是美国在中东地区和阿拉伯世界最坚定的盟友。美国自1979年埃及与以色列签署和平协议以来,每年向埃及提供大量的军事与经济援助。2013年7月3日,埃及民选总统穆罕默德·穆尔西被埃及军队废黜。根据联邦法律,美国暂停对埃及的部分援助。本文从“7·3”事件后美国对埃及援助的变化及其特点、影响援助变化的主要原因进行分析,展现美国对埃及援助政策中的复杂利益和战略考量,根据对历史与现实的分析,预测美国今后对埃援助政策的走势。     

全球经济纵横谈

本轮全球经济金融危机和贸易逆差背后的因素在于美国。这主要是与1980年代以后美国开始推行金融自由化和2001互联网泡沫破灭后美联储的货币应对政策失误有关。其根源在于目前的国际货币体系。美国作为储备货币国为了解决国内的问题,在宏观的货币政策当中只考虑本国的利益,结果就产生了对全世界的影响。目前国际上主流理论界普遍认为政府应该控制赤字规模,以提高私营部门投资的信心,这种做法很可能既不能帮助经济走出危机,也不能控制赤字快速积累,必须实行全球的超越凯恩斯主义的复苏计划。现在主流发展经济学的理论有相当大的问题,在中国的未来发展过程中,必然还有很多矛盾和冲突出现。我们只有独立研究,进行理论创新,把问题看得更全面,才会让我们在国际经济发展中化被动为主动。     

Have wars and violence declined?

For over 150 years liberal optimism has dominated theories of war and violence. It has been repeatedly argued that war and violence either are declining or will shortly decline. There have been exceptions, especially in Germany and more generally in the first half of the twentieth century, but there has been a recent revival of such optimism, especially in the work of Azar Gat, John Mueller, Joshua Goldstein, and Steven Pinker who all perceive a long-term decline in war and violence through history, speeding up in the post-1945 period. Critiquing Pinker’s statistics on war fatalities, I show that the overall pattern is not a decline in war, but substantial variation between periods and places. War has not declined and current trends are slightly in the opposite direction. The conventional view is that civil wars in the global South have largely replaced inter-state wars in the North, but this is misleading since there is major involvement in most civil wars by outside powers, including those of the North. There is more support for their view that homicide has declined in the long-term, at least in the North of the world (with the United States lagging somewhat). This is reinforced by technological improvements in long-distance weaponry and the two transformations have shifted war, especially in the North, from being “ferocious” to “callous” in character. This renders war less visible and less central to Northern culture, which has the deceptive appearance of being rather pacific. Viewed from the South the view has been bleaker both in the colonial period and today. Globally war and violence are not declining, but they are being transformed.     

The cosmopolitan organization — an essay on corporate accountability

Abstract Transnational corporations increasingly seek to present a vision of social responsibility alongside the business vision. This reflects greater awareness of ‘the world as one single place’, of global risk scenarios, and the politics of doing business. There are also demands for greater transparency and accountability in corporate actions by state representatives, grassroots movements and organized consumers. Transnational corporations now aim to be socially responsible and to engage in ‘corporate citizenship’ by adhering to voluntary codes of conduct, social accountability standards, etc. This discourse of corporate accountability is part of a discourse of globality, or ‘globe talk’, a vital component of contemporary world culture, largely produced, diffused, and sustained by organizations with expansive ambitions of regulating global business; transnational corporations, business associations, international organizations, NGOs and INGOs. Awareness of the global nature of trade and capitalism, the associated risk scenarios, and the attempts at approaching something like a humane globalization by the setting up of ethics standards and codes of conduct, may be understood as a particular case of ‘worldism’. This ‘worldism’ is foundational, with universalizing and homogenizing claims. ‘Corporate citizenship’ and ‘accountability’ are therefore treated as a form of organizational culture that involves a particular kind of moral cosmopolitanism.     

‘We Thought the World Was Makeable’: Scenario Planning and Postcolonial Fiction

Abstract

This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the discourse of scenario planning. I argue that scenario planning, a strategy of speculation about possible futures, elides history—specifically the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism—in favour of the idea of globalization as an inexorable unfolding of the world as a complex system. Following a brief genealogy of the discourse of scenario planning that highlights its Cold War origins, and ongoing function in imagining, and helping to secure, the future of global capitalism, I offer as counterpoint a postcolonial reading of Animal's People. A fictional exploration of the aftermath of the 1984 Union Carbide factory gas leak in Bhopal, India, the novel contests (thematically and formally) the hegemonic temporality of globalization that informs scenario planning and the model of risk management it inspires.     

Responses to globalization: Indian perspectives

India has a long tradition in influencing and participating to the globalization processes. Three phases can be distinguished in India’s history:

1. Colonial period up to 1947
2. Nation building through government policies from 1947 to 1990, and
3. The era of liberalization since 1991.

Like any ancient civilization, India has responded to the forces of globalization and has experienced both continuity and change. In the current phase, globalization is experiences a two-way scheme: while multinational companies are entering India, many Indian companies have a clear ambition to “take India to the world”. Given the number and diversity of Indian organizations, all approaches and interventions of OD have been already used. Family enterprises and the government have played a central role in shaping the Indian answer to globalization. Developing a global mindset is India’s major challenge for the future.     

Managing ‘American Islam’

Focusing on the case of Islam in post-9/11 United States, this article highlights the particularity of how US secularism is enacted by the state. In much sociological theory, the United States has been understood to be a neutral and non-interfering state with regard to religion, thereby fostering a pluralist religious context of free consumer choice. Some Muslim reformists have argued that this context makes the US highly fertile ground upon which to reform Islam and to improve women's status in Islam. This article argues that, in the context of the US-led ‘war on terror’, the government has drawn on and amplified this discourse in the service of producing a representation of the US as tolerant, while also seeking to promote a concept of ‘true’ Islam and produce patriotic Muslim citizens. At the center of this discourse are contested portrayals of Muslim women as symbolic of a modern and liberated Islam that is uniquely ‘American’ and opposed to other presumably oppressive Islams. While this context may in fact promote the reform of Islam, it does so with state involvement rather than as a result of state neutrality.     

Roads to American Empire: U.S. Military Public Works and Capitalist Transitions, 1898–1934.

Between 1898 and 1934, in synchronous and successive U.S. military interventions and occupations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers made public works, and especially roads, into a global technology of imperial power. This essay examines infrastructure as a factor in state formation and capitalist transition in these five different imperial spaces as a way to study U.S. empire, and its effects on foreign societies, through a comparative, global, and intra‐imperial approach often precluded by the methodological nationalism of historical and sociological literatures. Despite significant differences between these sites of U.S. war and occupation, both prior to American interventions and during them, U.S. military public works expressed and advanced a common political‐economic logic of state centralization and capital accumulation. Colonial and post‐colonial political institutions and political economies, the strength of central governments, the extent of plantation agriculture and rural proletarianization, world commodity markets, and geography and natural events varied, but determined U.S. imperial infrastructure's outcomes. By the 1930s, the U.S. military had elevated infrastructural improvement to a key repertoire of American imperial power in the world, and one which persisted as the United States turned away from formal colonialism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization.     

Developing Diversity Competence in Child Welfare and Permanency Planning

ABSTRACT

The vision of the pluralistic society of the 1960s relied on the recognition of differences rather than on assimilation. Pluralism held that finally, in America, minorities did not need to melt and adopt the norms of the majority. But the cultural pluralistic perspective has been strongly questioned since the 1990s. Concerns have been raised about whether the alteration of power relations in the United States can be achieved civilly. This article examines the value of long-held assumptions about the common core and explores the desirability of building on it for the next millennium. It moves beyond traditional perspectives of the common core and proposes the notion of a transcul-tural citizen who might be able to move with ease between cultures, whether within the confines of the United States or on a more global level. Illustrations from the United States and abroad are given. Lessons for social work in Europe and America are drawn.