Rethinking about Civilizations: The Politics of Migration in a New Climate

Abstract

In this paper, I will lay out some useful conceptual/theoretical markets that will help us to understand, and resolve, significant political challenges to ‘action’ on climate change migration. Thus, while this paper is concerned with climate change and migration responses, it is also concerned with understanding how we understand migration in the context of climate change, and how climate change forces a radical shift in such understandings. To do so, I pick up on the work of Robert W. Cox and push it in a different direction. In particular, I am interested in his work on civilizations, and how this civilizational account of world politics opens up space for thinking about climate change broadly, and climate change migration specifically. I argue that Cox’s account of ‘inter-civilizational’ politics helps us to solve a pressing analytical problem: how to rethink the coordinates of contemporary cosmopolitics in the ‘Anthropocene’, and reconsider the frames of analysis that we adopt to understand and respond to climate change migration. I demonstrate this by considering two distinctly different ‘civilizational’ accounts of migration and mobility in the Asia-Pacific/Oceania region (one territorial and the other maritime), and consider how these might reveal an important source of future change. By sketching out this approach, my intention is to mobilize the resources offered by Cox in order to further his project of envisaging alternative world orders, and post-hegemonic political relations therein.     

Labour in Global Production: Reflections on Coxian Insights in a World of Global Value Chains

Abstract

This essay reflects on Robert W. Cox's work on global production, labour, and labour governance, and considers how his insights might illuminate the present conjuncture for labour in production. I work with an understanding of that conjuncture as involving the rise to pre-eminence of global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs) as the contemporary expression of the ongoing globalization of production. The primary tasks of the essay are twofold: first, to explore the dynamics of labour and power in the GVC-based global economy, with a particular emphasis on labour exploitation; and second, to link these questions to those of the governance of the global economy, focusing on the shift towards transnational private governance as the dominant mode of contemporary governance, and on the evolving strategies of organized labour and the International Labour Organization in that context.     

Robert W. Cox's Method of Historical Structures Redux

Abstract

This article argues that Cox's Method of Historical Structures (MHS), although a highly useful tool for understanding the world, should be adapted to make it more effective as a framework for understanding world order in the twenty-first century. The advent of the method helped rejuvenate critical scholarship in international relations and international political economy during the 1980s. It offered a way out of the excessively structural approaches that had dominated critical thinking in the 1960s and 1970s. Cox's method enabled the unpacking of a structure, so that the components that made up any particular configuration could be considered analytically. Providing guidance on how to look at an historical order, and how to consider the component features of that structure, proved to be a revelation for many critical scholars of international relations. Surprisingly, given Cox's highlighting of the distinction between critical and problem-solving theory introduced in the same Millennium article, what really distinguishes Cox's approach, and why it has had the impact it has, is the pragmatism of the method. The MHS offers the possibility of a more closely reasoned analysis of world order than was previously available. It was the practical and somewhat systematic quality of the MHS that made it influential because it offered to facilitate empirical research by critical scholars. Thirty-five years on, the Method looks less satisfactory and this article offers some suggestions for its development.     

Fantasias of terrorism

An introduction to this special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research, this essay explains how terrorism may be said to equate to a “fantasia”, and how this fantasia has operated in different times and places. It also takes a close look at the popular fantasia promoted by the entertainment industry today, beginning with representations of the enemies of James Bond. In popular culture, terrorism is a spectre (along the lines of Ian Fleming’s SPECTRE) bent on the destruction of society, and yet it is also a sign of disorder at the heart of the very society which it attacks. Jacques Derrida’s comments on 9/11, using the metaphor of an auto-immune disorder, are pertinent. Film and television fantasias of terrorism offer critiques of the modern world order, but they offer the wrong critique.     

罗伯特"诗意人生"的美学诠释

美国现代戏剧巨擘尤金·奥尼尔的成名作《天边外》是一部以主人公罗伯特梦起梦灭为主题的文学作品。在这部充满了浪漫诗情的剧本中,奥尼尔彰显出一位悲剧大师在塑造悲剧人物时的艺术自觉和美学意识。他力求艺术的真实模式,关注人们精神层面的彷徨与哀伤,并以诗意的方式歌颂人在残酷命运面前的高贵与从容。在文本细读的基础上结合美学理论对罗伯特至纯至美的“诗意人生”予以评述,不仅更深层次地揭示了该部作品的思想内涵与美学意蕴,同时也拓展了该剧的探索空间和力度。     

简单的深邃——罗伯特·弗罗斯特诗歌创作艺术管窥

弗罗斯特诗歌的魅力在于它貌似自然、直接、简单,而实际上根本就不像其表面上看的那么自然、直接、简单。人说他的诗歌清新明了,但诗人似乎存心让天真的读者迷恋于他那明朗透亮的外衣,以至无法透视诗人所配戴的微妙假面。在弗罗斯特看来,诗歌创作的最高境界在于其形式的简单而内容的深邃。在追求诗歌创作艺术中这种简单深邃的“隐秘性”过程中,弗罗斯特筑起了一座在美国诗歌史上风格瑰异的艺术大厦。     

《三国演义》中人名英译研究——从归化和异化的角度

从异化与归化的角度,以罗（慕士）译本为研究语料,讨论《三国演义》中人名的英译。认为：作为翻译思路和方法的法和异化法不是一个孰是孰非的问题,而是一个＂度＂的问题。具体采用哪种方法与语言环境和译者的目的、意图有关,也与读者的接受效果有关。     

罗伯特·弗罗斯特——独立但不孤立的现代诗人

罗伯特·弗罗斯特是美国20世纪最伟大的诗人之一,他的诗以＂简单而深邃＂的风格著称。当众多现代派诗人努力摆脱传统诗歌的束缚,寻求新的诗歌创作模式时,罗伯特·弗罗斯特对这场改革似乎并不热衷,但以独特的诗歌创作手法和智慧的思考获得了社会的认可。从罗伯特·弗罗斯特对待传统诗歌的态度、写作视角、对工业文明的看法等方面与同时代许多现代派诗人的比较,说明其虽独立但不孤立。     

"一个最严肃的道德主义者"的自我追寻——从小说《国王的人马》谈沃伦的善恶观

通过分析罗伯特·佩恩·沃伦的小说《国王的人马》的主题,运用原型分析的方法,试图找到作者意欲表现的善恶观.分析发现,沃伦的作品中表现的善恶观,源于《圣经》对作者的浸染,带有原罪与救赎的内涵.     

儿童诗语言中游戏精神赏析——以《My Shadow》为例

文章介绍了史蒂文森的儿童诗集《A Child''s Garden of Verses》，并以其中知名度较高的一首儿童诗《My Shadow》为例，从叙事结构和语音词汇两个角度，分析了作者充满童趣的语言中所蕴含的游戏精神，探讨了儿童诗在儿童阅读和心灵成长中的价值。