Icons,Itinerary, and Identity: Associations of Boundary and Mobility within the Contemporary US Passport

Regulatory shifts in US border policy set in motion through implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative are concurrent with recent formal and functional changes to the US passport. This article examines these modifications interweaving themes of boundary, mobility, and identity. The study focuses on the tripartite means by which the state employs the passport: as the primary affixer of national identity; as a mediator of contact and mobility across national boundaries; and as a mode for the projection of a certain territorial discourse to its citizenry and ‘others.’ These concepts are developed through an analysis of the narrative and iconic representations contained within the new book itself; material sources from government archives; as well as discussions and interviews with US State Department functionaries closely associated with the design and distribution of the new e-passport. Through the latter examination, a view is afforded into the process by which key state documents are crafted and an inherent tension revealed within an agency charged with establishing a particular unifying ‘brand’ for the preeminent instrument of national identification, whilst dutifully acknowledging the diverse constituency of a nation that historically fashions itself as one constructed from the many. In conclusion, the study suggests that the new passport is the handiwork of a plethora of state actors and a servant of many masters, for it is not only a facilitator of mobility and a vouchsafe for the identity of the bearer, but also, a tiny but significant piece of US property, itself an agent of border maintenance and boundary construction that enables the state to lay claim to its citizenry.     

作为类型的政治运动:十七年电影中的象征与意识形态关联

对于中国十七年电影,在电影理论中一般被当作类型问题的象征形象(即对视觉形象的主题和意义的研究)往往是由意识形态内容决定的,结果允许在虚构的故事片和纪实的纪录片之间、动态的镜头段落和静态的舞台表演之间形成一条松散分界线。不同电影类型之间可以互动,并且以共同的意识形态目标为基础,形成一种独特的“运动类型片”。     

‘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.