|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
072690
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2006.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the changing nature of organized violence in post-New Order Indonesia. The New Order regime, which ended with the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, employed violence as a central strategy for maintaining political control, both through the state apparatus and via state proxies: criminal and paramilitary groups acting in the state's behalf. In effect, violence and criminality were normalized as state practice. The collapse of the New Order and the resulting fragmentation of its patronage networks have prompted a decline in state-sponsored violence, but at the same time the number of non-state groups employing violence and intimidation as a political, social, and economic strategy has increased. This article looks at this phenomenon of the "democratization" and privatization of organized violence in post-New Order Indonesia via detailed case studies of a number of paramilitary and vigilante groups. While operating in a manner similar to organized crime gangs, each group articulates an ideology that legitimizes the use of force via appeals to ethnicity, class, and religious affiliation. Violence is also justified as an act of necessary rectification rather than direct opposition, in a situation where the state is considered to have failed in providing fundamentals such as security, justice, and employment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
072688
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2006.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Nationalist ideology and nationalist practice in Japan between 1937 and 1945 were fundamentally conditioned by gender. For women, the proper roles of the subject were most fully elaborated through the patriotic women's associations, principally Aikoku fujinkai (Patriotic Women's Association), Kokub? fujinkai (Women's National Defense Association), and Dai Nippon fujinkai (Greater Japan Women's Association). The last of these claimed 27 million members throughout the empire. The women's associations attempted to define the ideal relation between women and the nation, primarily through an emphasis on home and motherhood. Yet, by 1945, wartime requirements had exposed basic flaws in their ideology from the state's point of view. Not only did the emphasis on home and motherhood impede the use of women in the labor force, more fundamentally, leaders of the women's associations and others realized that devotion to family might also lead to women failing to encourage their young sons to join the military. In these circumstances, a strong focus on the family, which had earlier been positively evaluated as the major part of women's gendered contribution to the war effort, came to be redefined as a form of "individualism," which had to be resisted for the national good. By this stage, "family" and "state" could no longer be taken for granted in official rhetoric as mutually reinforcing entities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
072687
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2006.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Chinese nationalism has ignited much debate among academics and the general public in both China and the West. Rather than search for the true core of Chinese nationalism, this essay will examine the curious custom of National Humiliation Day as an oblique entry into the politics of identity. The nation is not simply a question of people or territory, the author contends, but of time: the national time scripted by events such as National Humiliation Day. By comparing the differing practices of the holiday as it was celebrated in the early twentieth century and is observed in the early twenty-first century, the author argues that in the early twentieth century the political performances aimed to produce a proper Chinese nation out of the clashes between the Qing dynasty, northern warlords, and foreign empires. The goal was to construct a "China" worthy of being saved. When National Humiliation Day was revived in China at the turn of the twenty-first century, the political performances were more focused on containing the nation through a commemoration of the various crises of the early twentieth century. Thus the essay will argue that the nation does not arise from the ideology of its leaders, as much as through popular performances such as National Humiliation Day. Hence it shows how politics is best analyzed as a series of performances, not just by state actors in official sites like the Foreign Ministry, but also through the cultural governance of less official sites in art, film, literature - and public holidays. In this way, National Humiliation Day activities go beyond producing and containing nationalism; Chinese people are also consuming nationalism as part of a symbolic economy that generates identity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
072691
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2006.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the rise of private authority in globalized disaster relief scenarios by looking at the case of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Aceh and its neighboring region, Nias, after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The author places the growing strength and presence of NGOs within the larger context of weak, cash-strapped local governments under decentralization schemes promoted by neoliberal economic policies and argues that under such conditions, private actors such as NGOs are gaining a legitimacy of authority once reserved exclusively for the state. In Aceh after the tsunami, five hundred NGOs began operating relief and recovery efforts on the island with little consultation with local Acehnese government agencies and community organizations. The article concludes by arguing that the example of Aceh, in which public and private parallel systems of relief and recovery have been operating raises long-term issues of accountability for all parties involved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
072689
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2006.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article reassesses Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan in 1979, based on newly available archival materials, especially from the former USSR. The article argues that these Soviet documents show that the 1979 invasion reflected defensive rather than offensive objectives. Specifically, the USSR sought to restrain extremist elements of the Afghan communist party, who were undermining stability on the southern Soviet frontier. The findings of this article are at odds with with long-standing views that the invasion of Afghanistan was part of a larger Soviet strategy aimed at threatening the Persian Gulf and other western interests.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|