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| 1 |
ID:
163348
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| Summary/Abstract |
Some scholars have attempted to find ways to distinguish guanxi from bribery, which can be difficult due to the role played by four traditional Chinese concepts and practices. First, people value the renqing ethic more than law, making it hard to judge whether a relation has “improper inducements.” Second, some interaction rituals used in bribery guanxi are a type of moral performance, undertaken to justify immoral practice – this mixes together guanxi practice with bribery. Third, some of the “ganqing” (affection) and esteem expressed in bribery guanxi results from this moral performance, rather than from genuine affection and esteem. Fourth, some people try to embody their relationship as an enduring guanxi, rather than one-off bribery, which exacerbates the difficulty in distinguishing guanxi from bribery. Because of the moralizing culture and the custom of mixing together renqinq and bribery, it can be difficult to distinguish bribery from guanxi by attempting to judge whether an action is purely based on esteem or coercion, on an enduring relationship or a one-off exchange, on improper inducement or proper conduct, or other such formal distinctions.
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| 2 |
ID:
121776
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper builds a critical geography of poverty finance with recourse to a relational comparison of the microfinance and subprime mortgage markets. It probes paradoxical claims about the nature of poverty, the poor, states and markets that have surfaced in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In doing so it aims to generate new understandings of neoliberal global finance with specific emphasis on 1) the social constitution of risk through racialised and gendered forms of difference; 2) the exercise of dispossession and imperialism by financial means; and 3) articulations of poverty finance with the social relations of debt in specific conjunctures. Each of these terrains of inquiry forms a subsection of the paper, following a preliminary section that poses the animating paradox in more detail. The paper concludes with some reflections on the conditions of possibility for democratising finance.
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| 3 |
ID:
121784
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this article, I interrogate what is meant by 'the politics of sovereign debt', and examine how various authors, especially David Graeber, have addressed this question. More specifically, I seek to extend my contribution to the goals of the 'Repoliticizing Debt' workshop, which inspired this special issue, by proposing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of sovereign debt in mediating the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, and by challenging dominant treatments of the sovereign debt crisis currently underway in Greece. I argue that the existing literature fails to help grasp the complexity of sovereign debt as a social relation, and that debt must be understood as what Marx refers to as 'fictitious capital', that is, capital backed not by a commodity transaction, but by a claim on future value. The management of confidence in the value of fictitious capital through the use of the 'golden noose' of debt is the key process to be understood in order to grasp the complexity of sovereign debt crises.
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| 4 |
ID:
124944
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The lack of historical perspective in many studies of land grabbing leads researchers to ignore or underestimate the extent to which pre-existing social relations shape rural spaces in which contemporary land deals occur. Bringing history back in to land grabbing research is essential for understanding antecedents, establishing baselines to measure impacts and restoring the agency of contending agrarian social classes. In Central America each of several cycles of land grabbing-liberal reforms, banana concessions and agrarian counter-reform-has profoundly shaped the period that succeeded it. In the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras-a centre of agrarian reform and then counter-reform-violent conflicts over land have been materially shaped by both peasant, landowner and state repertoires of contention and repression, as well as by peasants' memories of dispossession.
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| 5 |
ID:
125028
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
FOREIGN POLICY cannot remain frozen; it is as fluid as any other sphere of social relations. Indeed, at different stages of human history, wars, national and religious movements, technical innovations, and scientific discoveries triggered changes in world politics. In the last five years, global economy gradually recovering from the world crisis which began in 2008 has been a catalyst of such changes. Economic problems which have not yet left the stage affected and continue to affect the UK foreign policy.
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| 6 |
ID:
153729
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper makes the case for a broadening of conceptual vocabularies in security studies by extending the sub-discipline’s predominantly geopolitical focus to the ‘geosocial’. Based on a review of work on human security and of feminist and anthropological research on (in)security and violence, we argue that there remains a need for further conceptual development to which geosocial approaches can make a significant contribution. They move us beyond compartmentalisation towards understanding social relations as a key medium through which connections between different forms of (in)security are forged. This prompts the mapping of a wider kaleidoscope of intersecting security issues, experiences, practices, subjects and topographies that include, but are not exhaustively explained by, geopolitical and geoeconomic processes. Drawing on findings from a participatory research project conducted with marginalised young people in Leipzig (Germany) between 2014 and 2015, we argue for greater attention to four issues that are rarely thematised in security studies and which geosocial approaches bring more squarely into focus: 1) social relations as a key connective tissue through which different dimensions of (in)security are entangled and through which these entanglements are given shape; 2) social relations as sources of security and insecurity; 3) security practices as including the emotional and practical labour invested in sustaining, moulding or dealing with the breakdown of social relations; and 4) the topographic stretching and hybridisation of social relations that furnishes not just cultures of fear but can also generate greater senses of security.
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| 7 |
ID:
124957
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
A safe, consistent blood supply in Pakistan is critical in combating maternal deaths due to haemorrhage. The dominant form of blood donation in Pakistan is a directed-replacement system. Complex sociocultural values influence from whom a recipient can receive blood. This focused ethnography aimed to investigate if, in this patriarchal society, the gender of the recipient influences who will donate blood. Data were collected from the district of Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Jhelum and Layyah in 2009 and 2012. Findings revealed that gendered notions of blood and blood donation construct reproductive blood loss as less serious than other types of blood loss. Husbands almost universally removed themselves from the process of blood procurement for their wives in the midst of a maternal health emergency. This was due to a combination of gender norms and beliefs about the power of blood, akin to the power of breast milk, to connect husbands and wives in a donor-recipient relationship that would lead to the negation of the marital contract. The inherent gendered devaluation of the lives of women was evident in the manner in which blood was procured for child-birthing women. These complex beliefs indicate that the idealized Euro-American blood system could be ineffective in this context.
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| 8 |
ID:
141401
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the implementation of China’s economic reform and opening-up policy at the end of the 1970s, garment manufacturing for both the domestic and global markets has developed and proliferated quickly in Guangzhou-centred South China. It is believed to be the result of the industrial restructuring of the global apparel commodity chain and a large domestic consumer demand from the Chinese people. Compared with other industries, the garment industry has long been subject to the strong impact of a transitional market economy and, more recently, the increasingly rapid process of marketisation in China. In order to provide a clear sociological conceptualisation of the market economy in the reform era, this paper aims to apply the relational work approach to analysing economic transactions in the garment business, particularly business dealings between garment producers and wholesalers. The focus is on their continued efforts to make appropriate economic arrangements in accordance with specific sets of social relations through continuous relational work. This paper will examine three categories of relational work and the associated economic forms in the making. First, it will explore families and the household economy; second, it will examine relatives and friends and the favour-based economy; and third, it will study strangers and the market economy. Through the use of this relational work framework, this paper will shed light on how the different sets of relational work help us to understand relationships and embeddedness between garment producers and wholesalers in China’s rapidly evolving garment economy.
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| 9 |
ID:
157766
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper provides a broad review of agrarian change in Ghana by highlighting the major developments in the agrarian political economy and their implications for agricultural commercialisation and its modifying influence on land tenure systems, livelihoods, production systems, social relations, and labour relations. While current land tenure arrangements and labour relations in Africa are often explained in terms of globalisation, we argue that the historical context of agricultural commercialisation in Ghana shows continuities and discontinuities in agrarian relations from the colonial period to the present. We also argue that changes over the years have blended with globalisation to produce the distinct forms of labour relations that we see today. The commercialisation of agriculture in Ghana has evolved progressively from the colonial era aided by policies of coercion, persuasion and incentives to its current globalised form. The expansion in the range of commodities over time necessarily increased the demand for more land and labour. The article contributes to the literature by providing great insights into changes in land and labour relations due to increasing commercialisation, and how these enhanced wealth accumulation for the richer segments of society and global capital to the detriment of the poor throughout Ghana’s agrarian history.
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| 10 |
ID:
139866
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| Summary/Abstract |
International Relation means the diplomatic-strategic relation of states and the characteristic focus of International Relation revolve on issues of war and peace, conflict and cooperation. Further, it is also cross border transactions of all kinds, political, economic and social
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| 11 |
ID:
167581
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article seeks to analyse the informal borrowing sources of the poor as well as the purposes for borrowing. The obsession on characterising the poor as financially excluded fails to grasp their active financial lives. This article emphasises how relations of credit/debt are rooted in complex social and cultural forces. It is precisely because of the social embeddedness of credit that family finance, though interest-free, is not a first resort. Similarly, credit in kind from shopkeepers, though critical to consumption smoothing, is detested by some people. Also, it is argued that the involvement of the traditional leader in repayment enforcement in informal financial groups challenges the economistic narrative that attempts to separate credit from cultural norms.
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| 12 |
ID:
097541
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| 13 |
ID:
179011
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| Summary/Abstract |
Marseille’s identity as a cosmopolitan place was a key element in the city’s application to be European Capital of Culture (ECOC) in 2013, where the city was represented as ‘the most cosmopolitan’ in Europe. The language of cosmopolitanism enabled city leaders to align Marseille with ‘European’ values of cultural diversity and to highlight the city as a place of diverse cultural production. Such claims have incited interest in a country where cultural and ethnic differences are often considered a challenge to the ideals of French Republicanism. Narratives of social and cultural relations in Marseille are in fact highly variable. This article uses a neighbourhood arts project as a case study through which to explore and situate understandings, representations and experiences of cultural and social relations in the city.
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| 14 |
ID:
124927
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Seven decades after its first publication, Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation remains one of the most insightful readings about the socioeconomic changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, and the ways in which law facilitated, or countered, moves towards the commodification of land at that time. As today's global land rush brings competing land claims into contest, new transitions are occurring between more commodified and more 'socially embedded' conceptualisations of land. Using Polanyi's framework, this article analyses the role of international law in these processes. International investment law construes land as a commercial asset, can facilitate access to land for foreign investors and imposes discipline on the exercise of regulatory powers in land matters. But shifts in the political economy that underpins international investment law and growing recourse to international human rights law are creating new opportunities for reflecting the non-commercial (cultural, social, political) relations within which land rights remain embedded in many societies. When contrasting conceptualisations of land collide, the relative strength of legal rights and enforcement mechanisms become particularly important. Ultimately, the legitimacy of international law to mediate between competing land claims will depend on the extent to which it can recognise the multiple values that society attaches to land.
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| 15 |
ID:
141845
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| Summary/Abstract |
The core claims of the practice turn in International Relations (IR) remain ambiguous. What promises does international practice theory hold for the field? How does the kind of theorizing it produces differ from existing perspectives? What kind of research agenda does it produce? This article addresses these questions. Drawing on the work of Andreas Reckwitz, we show that practice approaches entail a distinctive view on the drivers of social relations. Practice theories argue against individualistic-interest and norm-based actor models. They situate knowledge in practice rather than “mental frames” or “discourse.” Practice approaches focus on how groups perform their practical activities in world politics to renew and reproduce social order. They therefore overcome familiar dualisms—agents and structures, subjects and objects, and ideational and material—that plague IR theory. Practice theories are a heterogeneous family, but, as we argue, share a range of core commitments. Realizing the promise of the practice turn requires considering the full spectrum of its approaches. However, the field primarily draws on trajectories in international practice theory that emphasize reproduction and hierarchies. It should pay greater attention to practice approaches rooted in pragmatism and that emphasize contingency and change. We conclude with an outline of core challenges that the future agenda of international practice theory must tackle.
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| 16 |
ID:
124925
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Critical scholars have made extensive use of the concepts of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession to analyse the global land grab. These concepts have been crucial to efforts to understand the land grab in terms of the creation, expansion and reproduction of capitalist social relations, of accumulation by extra-economic means, and of dispossessory responses to capitalist crises. This paper provides an overview of these approaches. It also argues that there are substantial challenges involved in the use of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession, including tensions and ambiguities over what the concepts mean, the assumptions embedded within them and problems of fit with other conceptualisations of the land grab. The paper also highlights resources for engaging with these challenges in the land grab literature.
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| 17 |
ID:
127063
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Australia's international education serves as public diplomacy, essentially engaging and influencing public audiences in ways that progress Australian foreign policy priorities and national interests. The multidimensional and increasingly globalised nature of international education presents enormous opportunity for vital exchange and interactions between and with students, academics and communities via onshore and offshore modes of delivery. Positive experiences of student mobility and the development of intellectual, commercial and social relationships can build upon a nation's reputation, and enhance the ability of that nation to participate in and influence regional or global outcomes. This is ultimately the essence of soft power. While Australia has made significant commercial gains through international education, it has fallen short of realising the soft power potential inherent in the volume and depth of interactions, relationships and achievements resulting from it, particularly in the Asian region, where Australia's international education sector continues to be most active. This article argues that there is a soft power benefit in recognising international education as public diplomacy, though acknowledges that challenges exist in connecting the soft power aspirations to reality. Findings suggest that there is room for more coherent public diplomacy leadership and inter-agency coordination, improved evaluation and expanded dialogue both within the sector and the broader community.
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| 18 |
ID:
137632
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| Summary/Abstract |
Negotiation can be seen as a dynamic social process. Perspectives emphasizing the social context and dynamics of negotiations have been largely neglected in the negotiation literature. This article addresses the question of why social relations have received such scant attention, reviews the existing literature on negotiation as a social process, and spells out some ingredients of a social contextual approach. Finally, by way of illustration, such an approach is applied to international negotiations. Whereas ideas about social dynamics emanate from a focus on individuals, international negotiations take place at a level of aggregation and representation most remote from the individual level. Yet, even at this macro level, social context matters in negotiations.
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| 19 |
ID:
115834
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the history of Somalis in Kenya. It argues that the precarious citizenship status of Kenyan Somalis is rooted in the institutionalization of state power in Kenya and the ways in which social relations have mediated that power. It focuses on a screening exercise organized by the Kenyan government in 1989 to differentiate citizens from non-citizens. Somalis deemed non-citizens were detained and deported while those declared citizens were granted pink 'certificates of verification'. The exercise was framed as a response to disorder and insecurity in northern Kenya - problems blamed on the increased presence of 'aliens' from Somalia. The 1989 screening is a useful lens for understanding how the institutions of the Kenyan state have negotiated and produced citizenship. First, the screening shows how citizenship is an arena for both inter- and intra-ethnic competition; the way specific social relations are embedded within the structures of the state affects the distribution of rights and resources among different groups of citizens. Second, the organization of the screening reveals that public debates about citizenship in Kenya have not just been about drawing lines between insiders and outsiders, but about which insiders belong to which territorial spaces.
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| 20 |
ID:
129093
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Cast in the framework of social capital theory, this research used case studies to investigate the settlement experiences of African migrants in Armidale, Tamworth and Coffs Harbour in Australia. Analysis of individual (n = 29) and one focus group interview data revealed that most migrants expressed some satisfaction with service provision in the areas of initial settlement support and the work of local community organizations. Problems still remained with regard to employment, family reunion and dealing with changes in family relations. The study concludes that there is a need to educate African migrants on mainstream Australian culture in order to enhance the migrants' capacity to build social capital. Local governments need to make specific provisions within their policies, focusing on the settlement of migrants to address some of the gaps in services.
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