Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

Affective geographies examine the emotional dimensions of space and spatial relationships; geopolitics seeks to understand the role of space and geography in international relations. In this paper, we consider a hybridization of these concepts in the context of the Nordic countries, and in particular Denmark. Nordic countries have shifted attention to the wielding of “soft power” as a tool in seeking to achieve international relations and economic goals. We argue that in the case of Denmark, these soft power tools bear (...) an interesting affective dimension through an emphasis on “hygge,” or, “coziness.” Through media analysis, we illuminate the components of soft power in the Danish case and highlight the role of affect as a key element of these soft power tools. (shrink)

Rudolf Kjellén, regularly referred to as "the father of geopolitics," developed in the first decade of the twentieth century an analytical model for calculating the capabilities of great-power states and promoting their interests in the international arena. It was an ambitious intellectual project that sought to bring politics into the sphere of social science. Bringing together experts on Kjellén from across the disciplines, Territory, State and Nation explores the century-long international impact, analytical model, and historical theories of a figure (...) immensely influential in his time who is curiously little-known today. (shrink)

In this essay, we bridge the gap between two understandings of the power of the European Union (EU): as a normative actor, guided by ethical principles and empowered by the internal market, and as a geopolitical actor, building its own military capabilities and ready to defend its interests through deterrence and defense. In view of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we challenge the established “values vs. interests” dichotomy and argue that defending liberal democratic values is an essential foundation (...) of the EU's existing and potential geopolitical power. We show how, over the last decade, opting for short-term expediency and capitulating to a kind of realpolitik “regime indifference” in dealings with authoritarian regimes at home and abroad have severely weakened the EU and also diminished Ukraine's capacities to defend itself as it fights for these shared values on the battlefield. We argue that it is in the EU's strategic interest to strengthen its commitment to values-based foreign and defense policies, revive a meritocratic and credible enlargement process, and work with the United States to provide more effective military assistance to Ukraine in its fight for liberal democratic values and a rules-based European security order. (shrink)

Bioethics plays a pivotal role in guiding ethical decision-making within the realm of medical research and healthcare. However, the influence of geopolitics on bioethical considerations, particularly regarding bioweapons research, remains an underexplored area. This study delves into the uncharted territory of how international political interests can intersect with bioethical principles, potentially shaping collaborative efforts and global health policies related to bioweapons research. Through a hypothetical scenario involving a hypothetical pathogen, a collaborative effort between unspecified countries, we examine the implications (...) of such cooperation on global health governance, with a specific focus on bioweapons research. Ethical dilemmas surrounding responsible research, potential risks and benefits, equitable distribution of findings, and biosafety measures are explored. This analysis underscores the importance of transparent and responsible practices in bioweapons research amidst geopolitical tensions. By striking a balance between national interests and international solidarity, we advocate for robust bioethical frameworks to navigate such collaborations for the collective well-being of humanity and to mitigate potential risks associated with bioweapons research. (shrink)

This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red lines.’ It also identifies an agency problem in realism: realists (...) not only fail to do justice to the agency of small states like Ukraine in this conflict but elide the moral and practical agency of decisionmakers like Russian President Vladmir Putin. The article also suggests that the current realism debate is the tip of an iceberg: realism has long had a problem specifying the relation of its theory to its practice. The article concludes by discussing the long shadow of 19th century imperial history over contemporary discussions of spheres of influence and great power status. (shrink)

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or (...) lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Background. Ethics are rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or members of a profession. Medical research must be regulated to ensure that fundamental human rights are not breached in the quest for knowledge. Nigeria had no laws or specific guidelines to regulate health research until 2007, when a national regulatory body, the National Health Research Ethics Committee, was established. Its function is to ensure ethical conduct in research and to accredit institutional and state health research ethics committees.Objective. (...) To document the current role of HRECs in the ethical practice of health research in Nigeria, 4 years after the establishment of the NHREC.Methods. Functioning of the HRECs was evaluated via interviews of 14 members of state and institutional HRECs chosen from selected geopolitical zones of the country.Results. The HRECs surveyed had between nine and 15 members, with more males than females. Review meetings were held only occasionally owing to the competing interests of members, who receive no incentives for participation, and poor funding. Scientific and ethical reviews are conducted together by the same committee, but few members of the HRECs are trained in research ethics. Monitoring of research after approval is poor.Conclusion. Nigeria now has about 30 institutional HRECs, but their functioning is hampered by a shortage of both money and qualified individuals to serve on them. (shrink)

_This article examined the accounts of diplomatic relations between Russia and Syria. It interrogated a significant aspect of global politics, where the interaction of geopolitical interests, ideological affinities, and regional influences played defining roles in shaping this diplomatic association from the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s to the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011. This scope allowed extensive research into the changing nature of Russo-Syrian relations, providing a diverse revelation into their historical (...) evolution. This article relies on a wide array of primary sources, including diplomatic records, as well as secondary sources offering useful context and perspective. The primary aim was to reveal the motivations and strategies that steered diplomatic exchanges between them and the real-political considerations that formed the basis of their engagement. Moreover, this article considered the ramifications of Russo-Syrian relations on the broader Middle East region and how partnership affected regional stability, conflict, and the distribution of power such as the Soviet Union's support for the Ba'athist regime in 1963, Syria's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1967, and Russia's military intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015. Through historical evaluation, this article contributes to an understanding of international relations and their implications for security and stability._. (shrink)

The proposal of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a new geological epoch where humans represent the dominant natural force has renewed artistic interest in the ‘geopoetic’, which is mobilized by cultural producers to incite changes in personal and collective participation in planetary life and politics. This article draws attention to prior engagements with the geophysical and the political: the work of Simone Weil and of the editors of the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. Synthesizing the political and scientific shifts (...) in human-world relationships of their time, both projects are set against oppressive or narcissistic materialisms and experiment with the image of the ‘cosmic’ to cultivate a preoccupation not (only) with a tangible materialism but with an intangible one that emphasizes process and connectivity across wide spatial and temporal scales. The writers’ movement between poetics and politics will be used to enquire what kind of socio-political work a contemporary geopoetic could potentially do. (shrink)

With this introduction we aim to illuminate Western Europe's place on the map of Cold War science and, specifically, to draw attention to the differences in and the diversity of Western European Cold War science in comparison to the United States. By discussing narratives of Cold War science in small states and asking how they fit into the European condition, we suggest that the fact of being a small state affects the conditions for and the scope of Cold War science. (...) As a whole, this special issue also emphasizes the importance of the spatial dimension; that is, the significant dependence of Cold War science on geographical relations and geopolitical interests. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism on the contemporary geopolitical landscape. The authors argue that while the critique of Orientalism has significantly influenced academic discourse and domestic policies in Western countries, particularly the United States, it has not led to fundamental changes in global geopolitical strategy. The paper focuses on two key aspects: the natural connection between knowledge and power, which cannot be altered by anti-colonial declarations, and the shift of colonial discourse to (...) new regions, specifically non-Western Europe. The authors posit that the strength of a modern state lies in its ability to dynamically bifurcate its image into internal and external faces, presenting different aspects to its society and foreign partners. Using the United States as a case study, the article demonstrates how internal anti-colonial discourse coexists with an unchanging foreign policy strategy of global dominance. The authors criticize the illusions about the possibility of changing the fundamental principles of US foreign policy, which has remained consistent since 1941. The paper emphasizes the continuation of a strategy aimed at fostering global dependence on the West, despite anti-colonial rhetoric. The article explores the complex interplay between domestic movements for social justice and decolonization, and the pragmatic realities of international relations. It argues that the deconstruction of Orientalism, while challenging the legitimacy of historical colonial practices, has not transformed the core geopolitical interests of Western states.The authors contend that the apparent dichotomy between internal anti-colonial discourse and external policy reflects both the complexity and strength of states like the US, where domestic and foreign policies can be shaped by different institutional and ideological forces. The paper also discusses the expansion of the concept of liberal democracy as an export product to regions deemed lacking in popular sovereignty.In conclusion, the article suggests that the critique of Orientalism, despite its academic and cultural impact, has been effectively neutralized in geopolitical practice. This is achieved through a shift in focus to regions not traditionally considered part of the «old» Western colonies, allowing for the implementation of economic partnership policies without the moral self-flagellation associated with charges of Orientalism. The paper ultimately argues that renaming reality does not change its underlying structure, and that the postmodern belief in the power of language to transform geopolitical realities is akin to magical thinking. It concludes that the critique of Orientalism has not fundamentally altered the eternal principles and interests guiding global geopolitical strategies. (shrink)

State derecognition, defined as the withdrawal of recognition from a putative state, has been more impactful as a diplomatic subculture in the last decades than is often assumed. Recent practice suggests that when states engage in derecognition, they do not mechanically assess whether a state no longer fulfils the traditional criteria for statehood, but rather employ derecognition as a tool of foreign policy, tailored to enhance their own economic and geopolitical interests. The bargaining dynamics of derecognition and “rental (...) recognition” policies adopted by a range of smaller states create a precarious hostage-like situation for the targeted entities who helplessly watch their international status being traded in a recognition market. As the success of some claims to statehood risks beings reduced to a matter of pricing, a process of commodification emerges: state recognition is granted to the “highest bidder” regardless of factual reality or legal considerations. With this backdrop, the present paper seeks to clarify how international law conceptualizes derecognition and its hypotheses of legality, offering an overview of contemporary events of derecognition and expedient shifts in recognition to clarify the role and deficiencies of international law as it stands before the emerging phenomenon of “statehood commodification”. (shrink)

This is a global comparative analysis of the social, political and economic experiences, effects and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of it was written during an early stage of the pandemic and captures some of the initial reactions of competitive international panic. It demonstrates the new class structuration resulting from the management of the viral onslaught. It distinguishes coping and failing states of the pandemic world, and discusses the reasons for them. It highlights the widespread and rapid abandonment of (...) neoliberal economic policies, a change spearheaded by the former vanguard of neoliberalism, the USA and the UK. The end of neoliberalism is also related to the change of the political economy of the world, from capitalist globalization to imperial and national geopolitics. The decisive reason for the turn was the realization by the US elite in the 2010s that China was winning the game of competitive market globalization. In the new game of geopolitics state interests, state security and state power are paramount. This process had started earlier but was accentuated during the pandemic, and accelerated with the Ukraine war, which also has clarified that the new geopolitical era may be the beginning of the endgame of the semi-millennial western domination of the world. The western powers draw closer together, after the early pandemic free-for-all, while the rest of world increasingly asserts its independence. The article ends with a discussion of the post-pandemic near future in terms of historical post-crisis parallels from European history. Finding ‘1945’ and ‘1932’ inappropriate, in contrast to early hopes and assessments, the conclusion is that the current world of the North most resembles a before- rather than an after-moment, the summer of 1914, when the world ‘sleepwalked’ into the mass slaughter of the First World War. (shrink)

The Danish marine biologist Anton Frederik Bruun (1901–1961) is chiefly remembered as an explorer of the deep-sea fauna and a key figure in international scientific organizations during the 1950s. As the Cold War increasingly permeated the marine sciences and it became too expensive for small states to operate deep-sea research vessels, he became an asset to the USA's oceanographic establishment as it sought to first assess Soviet strength (in terms of research, technology and logistical capacity) and then to build up (...) American oceanography in response. Bruun's contacts with the USSR – including a visit in 1957 – strengthened his contacts to the American military as well as American oceanographers. His enthusiasm for raising interest in the marine sciences in developing countries could also be matched to American geopolitical goals. Bruun's participation in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Naga expedition to the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand captured the mutually beneficial nature of his American connections. Bruun was able to use the USA to reach distant oceans, while the USA in turn gained from Bruun's prestige as it forged connections with friendly states through science, an increasingly important arena for Cold War competition. (shrink)

The difference in attitudes, interests and influences of the great powers contributedto greater uncertainty and fear for the future of nations and states. In the pastdecade, revisionist and autocratic countries such as Russia and China have sought toshift the focus from the West to the East and build a “post-Western world order” thatwill reshape the world against American values and interests. In this new period of transition,which resembles the time of the Cold War, the traditional security-military issuesof the (...) balance of power, the arms race, the struggle for territories and the strengtheningof alliances are being emphasized again. A possible confrontation between the greatpowers, where the United States of America is still the leading power in the world, whilethe PRC is the second economic and military power, and Russia is one of the two mostpowerful nuclear powers, could threaten global and regional security and stability.The sharpened geopolitical rivalry between the “big three” will increase tensionsin their spheres of interest, that is, in the regions and countries that are locatedon the strategic lines of separation. The focus of attention is on Eastern Europe and theIndo-Pacific region, which are of great geostrategic importance for the great powers andtheir alliances. Due to the historical connection with these “exclusive zones of interest”,there is a possibility that the previous “competitive coexistence” will escalate into anintense security rivalry. (shrink)

The paper examines a concept of the Balto-Black Sea Union, which ideas were translated into reality during the Kievan Rus and Grand Duchy of Lithuania period. In the 10th-11th centuries the road from the North to the South, from the East-country to the Black Sea ran through the territory of Ukraine. The way 'from the Varangians to the Greeks' integrated two regions, the Baltic and the Black Sea, and was to the advantage of all those involved. This conceptual idea was (...) again looked into by Ukrainian politicians and researchers in the early 20th century, it was explored and proposed by Mykhailo Grushevskyi, Yuriy Lypa and Stepan Rudnytskyi. The idea of the 'inter-sea area' became a subject for active discussion in Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Lithuanian political quarters in the late 1980s. This plot deserves attention of contemporary Ukrainian politicians in the current dynamic geopolitical context as an efficient and timely anti-Russian international project which will underpin the security of Ukraine. This idea was partially implemented in the form of the GUAM, the Black Sea Organization for Economic Cooperation and the Community of Democratic Choice. The natural vector 'North - South' of communicative and transit transport flows is not used in full measure by Ukraine. The Balto-Black Sea Union offers a significant security component which is of interest to the USA and the European Union. The emergence of such new world economic centers as the USA, the EU and China imparts a new focus to foreign policy priorities of Ukraine. (shrink)

In the article the attitude of the social and political elite to the existence of independent Ukraine. For this purpose analyzed the major geopolitical concepts and legal documents on foreign policy that defined the Russian policy on post-Soviet states during the 1990s. Common to all these works have analyzed the declaration of the Russian Federation Centre the former Soviet Union and former Soviet territory republics - the Russian zone of vital interests. Also, attention is focused on the plans (...) of the Russian social and political elite to restore the former USSR new association with the dominant role of Russia in it. The emphasis is on the negative perception of independence of Ukraine in the Russian social and political thought. Also accented Russian politicians to substantiate the need to restore political unity of the Slavic peoples, to return the "natural" geopolitical status of Russia, provide a geopolitical control over the territories that were part of the USSR. Political, economic, military and informational relationship between Ukraine and Russia in terms of Russian politicians, the long-term national interests of Russia. On the contrary same integration of Ukraine to other international entities threat to the Russian Federation and the plan of building a "Great Russia". The influence of these concepts on the formation of foreign policy strategy, particularly in the current policy of Russia towards Ukraine. It is assumed that it is the political rhetoric of the Russian national patriots and left gave impetus to the efforts of great practical implementation of their geopolitical goals, including through the brutal interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. (shrink)

The importance of addressing the existential threat to humanity, climate change, has grown remarkedly in recent years while conflicting views and interests in societies exist. Therefore, climate change agendas have been weaponized to varying degrees, ranging from the international level between countries to the domestic level among political parties. In such contexts, climate change agendas are predominantly driven by political or economic ambitions, sometimes unconnected to concerns for environmental sustainability. Consequently, it can result in an environment that fosters antagonism (...) and disputes over power and position and increases the risk of prolonged confrontations, hindering the collective global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Through the current discourse, we aim to provide a preliminary definition of the weaponization of climate change and environmental sustainability and examine its risks and consequences on international relations, political dynamics, public perception, and the comprehensive integrity of climate action. We also recommend embracing a globally coordinated, scientifically substantiated approach to circumvent climate change by building an eco-surplus cultural value system. (shrink)

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To (...) illustrate this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy. (shrink)

John Locke was considerably interested and actively involved in the promotion of Protestant Christianity among American Indians and African slaves, yet this fact goes largely unremarked in historical scholarship. The evidence of this interest and involvement deserves analysis—for it illuminates fascinating and understudied features of Locke's theory of toleration and his thinking on American Indians, African slaves, and English colonialism. These features include (1) the compatibility between toleration and Christian mission, (2) the interconnection between Christian mission and English geopolitics, (3) (...) the coexistence of ameliorative and exploitative strands within Locke's stance on African slavery, and (4) the spiritual imperialism of Locke's colonial vision. Analyzing evidence of Locke's interest and involvement in Christian mission, this article brings fully to light a dimension of Locke's career that has barely been noticed. In so doing, it also illustrates how the roots of toleration in the modern West were partly evangelical. (shrink)

Nowadays, people, states and international organizations feel more threatened and insecure, more than in the past, and this has contributed to an increase in need for security and the establishment of a new order and rules through which the world’s problems will be successfully solved. One of the leading countries is the People’s Republic of China, which is taking an increasing share on the global stage and is striving to reduce the dominance and role of the United States and European (...) countries. The rise of China as an economic, security-military and information-technological power has contributed to the shift of the centre of gravity and power from the West to the East, and a lot of opportunities have been created for other Asian countries to find their place and role and be an important subject in the new international structure. With the inclusion of new actors on the international stage, the balance of power changes and new rules of the game are imposed, contrary to the Western countries. The “new managers” are expected to have greater responsibility and influence in reforming the existing international institutions, as well as reducing the factors that cause instability and lead to an anarchic world order. However, due to the different values, interests and goals promoted by the PRC, a number of security implications of an international nature, intensification of geopolitical and geo-economics rivalries, polarization, emergence of new risks and dangers, and increased tension between great powers are expected. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the phenomenon of hybrid war. Based on the fact that the military actions can be represented as the particular process, it is proposed to analyze the phenomenon on the technological approach. In addition, the study of the phenomenon does not occur within the traditional "democratic paradigm", and based on the assertion that in modern Ukraine the model of social and political order with an oligarchs in the center was formed. All state institutions and segments of (...) civil society are in a tough financial and economic dependence from the social group of oligarchs. The goals, objectives, principles, directions, forms, methods and techniques of conducting hybrid warfare are discussed. The general and the particular to the phenomena of the conventional war and the hybrid war is determined. Focuses on the complex nature of the phenomenon, its layered structure. In this connection, emphasizes the fact that the main actors of the war at different levels perform different roles, which is fixed by experts who analyze the situation. In particular, Ukraine can be considered as the subject of a hybrid war at the regional level, but it also becomes the purpose and the object as to the subjects of higher geopolitical level. In general, the phenomenon of hybrid war characterized by a lack of principles in building of the technological process. In the specific case of Ukraine, the lack of clear principles in the organization of the process dictated by economic interests of oligarchic clans that joined the struggle for the redistribution model in securing ownership of tools and means of production. Other elements of the process of the hybrid war are serve the implementation of the corporate interests of the oligarchs. In addition, the Ukrainian oligarchic structures are the link, the conductor for the interests of oligarchic structures of higher global level. The main tool in this struggle is the information - the main resource of the era, on which the oligarchs try to win a monopoly. Thus, we can talk about the oligarchic discourse of the hybrid war in Ukraine, as invariably present oligarchic component in all its elements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive UtopianismAntonis Balasopoulos (bio)It is well known that the decline of programmatic or so-called blueprint utopias and utopianism came on the heels of a widespread and concerted attack against them during the first two decades of the Cold War. In the writings of thinkers like Hayek, Popper, Talmon, Kolakowski, and many others, program became synonymous with hubris.1 It was construed as (...) a dangerous effort to regulate the diversity of human subjectivity and the complexity of the social organism, a repressive will-to-order and predictability that tainted utopias by associating them with Totalitarianism. In Popper’s exemplary exposition:The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint for society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship. [...] [Utopia] claims to plan rationally for the whole of society, although we do not possess anything like the factual knowledge which would be necessary to make good such an ambitious claim.2 [End Page 489]Yet, though this view of how Utopia, to recall Robert C. Elliott, became “a bad word,” is accurate in itself, it also reflects only the negative or destructive side of Cold War anti-utopianism, a trend whose logical inconsistencies and ideological biases have already been ably dissected in the work of Russell Jacoby, Marc Olssen, and Darren Webb, to name but a few.3What one could term the “positive” or “productive” side of anti-utopian denunciations of the dogmatically programmatic character allegedly inherent in utopias went well beyond the exigencies of generating a geopolitical and ideological enemy image. It involved an effort to reconcile western subjects to seismic and highly consequential shifts within postwar, late-capitalist societies themselves. If, as I have argued elsewhere, utopian fictions (and, indeed, nonfictions) before the Cold War period can be read as fictions of organization—of everything from architecture and urban planning, to production, sexuality and biological reproduction, clothing, or diet—it is also the case that in them, “organization” is a response, a reaction to traumatic historical experiences of disorganization, from the decline of the ancient city-state in the case of Platonic utopianism; to the impoverishment and dislocation of rural communities in the era of Thomas More; to the experience of the fracturing of religious community during the religious, civil, and international wars that marked the seventeenth century; to the dramatic impact of early nineteenth-century industrialization on artisanal and agrarian communities, on family cohesion and on the rhythms of the premodern working day.4My argument is, then, that the anti-utopian denunciation of blueprint and program was not simply motivated by the liberal capitalist attack against the planned and highly regulated character of economy and society in the countries of so-called actually existing socialism. It was also motivated by the ideological need to normalize and legitimize the transition, within western capitalist societies themselves, to what Scott Lash and John Urry called “disorganized capitalism.” Lash and Urry’s book, originally published during the decade of the triumphant rise of neoliberalism, in 1987, launches its investigation by tellingly quoting the passage of Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto that focuses on the creatively destructive aspects of capitalist social transformation: the bourgeoisie, Lash and Urry observe, is a class “with vested interest in change, crisis and chaos”; the social world over which it presides is one “which swings wildly out of control, menacing and destructive.”5 In their introduction, the authors outline the basic features of the postwar shift from the organized capitalism of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its disarticulated successor formation during the rise of [End Page 490] neoliberal governance. Under the rubric of “disorganization” (which is to say, of a mutation within the western capitalist economic and social order), they include de-industrialization and the decline in the absolute and relative size of the working class in the core capitalist economies; the rise of flexible forms of labor organization in the place of defunct Taylorist principles; the weakening of trade unionist organization; the increasing decoupling of large monopolies from the control and regulation... (shrink)

Conceived in Liberty is a cultural, sociological and geopolitical review of the uniquely American notion that the country and its people are "exceptional." While all nations have their own patriotic commitments, no other people have outwardly declared their power as vigorously as have Americans, especially since World War II. John J. Tierney, Jr. advances the idea that liberty is the singular source of the power of the American worldview and all other elements of this society--equality, patience, charity, justice, etc.--are (...) derived from liberty. He argues that this worldview comes from this one source and is responsible for the many movements that may engage the public's interest, such as women's rights, civil rights, and voting rights. Such movements are all positive, but they could not exist in a society devoid of liberty. Conceived in Liberty also traces other main components of the American worldview: geographic expanse, immigration, energy of the populace, diversity, public policies, and the elements that contribute to exceptionalism. Tierney is not blind to some of the deficiencies of the United States, but he posits that the liberty it manifests is truly the political globe's last, best hope. (shrink)

Russia's war against Ukraine has had devastating human consequences and destabilizing geopolitical effects. This roundtable takes up three critical debates in connection with the conflict: Ukraine's potential accession to the European Union; the role of Ukrainian nationalism in advancing democratization; and the degree of human rights accountability, not just for Russia, but also for Ukraine. In addition to challenging conventional wisdom on each of these issues, the contributors to this roundtable make a second, critically important intervention. Each essay explores (...) the problem of concealed political and normative commitments within much of the research on Russia's war against Ukraine by unearthing biases intrinsic to particular conceptualizations. The collection also questions the perceived separation between “interests” and “values” that permeates policy analysis. This roundtable further draws attention to the ethical problems that scholars and policymakers bring to policy debates through the occlusion of their preexisting political commitments. It argues for greater transparency around and awareness of the ways in which values, not just evidence, inform research findings and policy positions. (shrink)

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or (...) lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One of the most considerable changes in the contemporary European educational mentality is a person's disconnection from spiritual life. Christian formation has been replaced with religious pluralism, in terms of syncretism influenced by global economic ideologies. Some consequences are low resilience and low spiritual resistance to contemporary challenges, associated with mental traumas or social behaviour deficits. Is it possible to restore the modern person's spiritual education? There is no evolution in the modern individual's social life without a horizon of spiritual (...) expectation and fulfilment, different from the strictly material one. Moreover, conscious education cannot deprive people of cultivating the spiritual part of their consciousness from which the real values of existence are born. A series of arguments for renewing the relation between school and the mature, Scripture-based Christian thinking in the spirit of the European pedagogy are revealed by the factual historical analyses. Both Eastern and Western European experiences have met after 13 years of evolving into two antagonist geopolitical spheres. Their lessons in the education field could be an appropriate model, academically applied at the cultural mentality and the European pedagogy level. CONTRIBUTION: With this study, I want to highlight the historical and conceptual frameworks of the Christian religious education meaning in the context of the rediscovery of Orthodox Christianity by the international theological culture in post-communism. Orthodox Christianity, forgotten in dictionaries and syntheses by the Western theological elite, brings in a spiritualisation of education according to the Lord Jesus Christ's Gospel and not of the ideological cultural interests. (shrink)

In the heart of southeast Texas, an industrial powerhouse often referred to as the 'Golden Triangle', the oil refineries and petrochemical plants stand as stalwart testaments to the region's economic evolution. Interestingly, before the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the lumber and cattle industries powered this region's economy. A profound shift occurred when the Lucas Gusher, a fountain of oil spurting thousands of feet into the air, struck the lands of Spindletop Hill on January 10, 1901. This remarkable discovery of (...) the Spindletop oilfield on a slat dome formation south of Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry and fundamentally transformed the region's geopolitical, economic, and cultural landscapes. People from all over the country relocated to Gladys City and Beaumont in search of work and new opportunities, creating a boomtown as the town's population swelled from 10,000 to 50,000. The newfound urbanization brought by the oil industry transformed the town and the surrounding areas, creating a ripple effect across the region that would be felt for generations to come. The surge in oil-driven economic activity transmuted the region into a vibrant nexus of commerce, with the oil industry emerging as a critical architect of growth and advancement. This newfound affluence incited by the petroleum sector ushered in an era of economic diversification, laying the groundwork for industrialization’s further evolution. The Spindletop Oil Fields not only underscored the United States’ ascent as the foremost petroleum-producing nation but also signaled the nation’s initiation into the Petroleum Age. It was Spindletop that solidified its position as America’s first significant oil field, becoming an enduring symbol of its industrial might. By 1985, over 153,000,000 barrels of oil had been produced and extracted from the Spindletop oil fields, underscoring the magnitude of this extraordinary resource. (shrink)

Science studies scholars often study up to high-tech elites who produce and design scientific knowledge and technology. Methodological tension begins when you pair a desire to study down to less economically developed countries, with the desire to study up to high-tech elites within them. This becomes further complicated when the ethnographer and his/her informants share professional interests and credentials. In these situations, the researcher has high status because of geopolitical privilege. However, the researcher is neither a high-tech elite (...) nor a local cultural elite. How might the ethnographer successfully access and navigate field sites imbued with these unseen power differentials? There are currently no visual mapping tools to enhance the process of reflexivity by feminist ethnographers, as they consider their globally embedded multiple, hierarchical, and situated positionality. This reflection methodology piece provides a tool to consider this phenomenon, as it exists across the Global North/south divide of power. Such a tool would be useful to northern ethnographers to better strategize ethics and access while avoiding complicity with structures of inequality and empowering their southern interlocutors. (shrink)

In this, the first major philosophical study of contingent pacifism, Larry May offers a new account of pacifism from within the Just War tradition. Written in a non-technical style, the book features real-life examples from contemporary wars and applies a variety of approaches ranging from traditional pacifism and human rights to international law and conscientious objection. May considers a variety of thinkers and theories, including Hugo Grotius, Kant, Socrates, Seneca on restraint, Tertullian on moral purity, Erasmus's arguments against just war, (...) and Hobbes's conception of public conscience. The guiding idea is that the possibility of a just war is conceded, but not at the current time or in the foreseeable future due to the nature of contemporary armed conflict and geopolitics - wars in the past are also unlikely to have been just wars. This volume will interest scholars and upper-level students of political philosophy, philosophy of law, and war studies. (shrink)

In the second half of the 19th century, pre-Hispanic jade artifacts from Mexico—especially jade celts and votive axes—stood at the center of scholarly debates on the origins of American civilizations. The contradiction between the prevalence of carved jades, on the one hand, and the apparent absence of jade mineral deposits in the Americas, on the other, resuscitated centuries-old theories that placed the beginnings of pre-Hispanic civilizations in China. The increasing availability of Chinese and Mexican jades in the same spaces of (...) commercial exchange, collection, display, and study—following French imperialist interventions in China and Mexico in the 1860s, which resulted in the plunder of a massive number of antiquities; and in a broader context of interest in jade that brought together artifacts from the South Pacific and from Neolithic contexts in Europe—contributed material proof to these theories. The so-called “jade question” was mostly dismissed by the 20th century, but the debates surrounding jade's mineralogical identity and provenance provide insight into the kinds of epistemological configurations, material limitations, and geopolitical arrangements that bore upon the emergence of new disciplines, including mineralogy, archaeology, and prehistory, as well as the new sciences of the pre-Hispanic past. This essay explores these processes and reconstructs the dense networks of private and public institutions, scholars, collectors, dealers, and connoisseurs, that made jade artifacts from Mexico—and Central America—into a scientific, aesthetic, and commercial category. (shrink)

Polemic texts on issues of Orthodox-Catholic relations occupy, for various reasons, a prominent place among publications in Ukrainian literature of the late 16th – early 17th centuries. Because of this, researchers of the history of Ukrainian literature continue to be interested in them. The history of the study of interconfessional polemics depends to a large extent on political contexts, primarily on the national and religious policies of states. Objective interpretation of polemical prose of the late 16th to the early 18th (...) centuries, however, warrants exemption from the influence of this state of affairs and the transfer of the focus of attention to the plane of literary communication. In such a context polemical texts can be seen as a manifestation of societal dialogue, reflecting the search of Ukrainian Baroque writers for their identity in the context of a civilizational dialogue between East and West and in geopolitical changes of the Reformation era. (shrink)

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how we can live with the material remains of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally rely on space infrastructures, they so far have failed to address the infrastructural challenge of debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community. One reason for this is the renewed (...) momentum of interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of the Moon and Mars, which is part of transhumanist and commercially driven dreams of the so-called New Space age. Understanding space infrastructures as inherently linked to earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space debris, a once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests, and geopolitics, increasingly becomes a matter of concern. Drawing on qualitative interviews with European space sector representatives and work in Science and Technology Studies on infrastructures, we argue that their discursive efforts and visual representation strategies coproduce space debris as a boundary infrastructure. We suggest considering this boundary infrastructure as relating orbital environments and the planet through enacting sustainability and responsibility for beyond-planetary environments. (shrink)

Bush administration foreign policy has exhibited a marked unilateralism and militarism in which US military power is used to advance US interests and geopolitical hegemony. The policy was first evident in the Afghanistan intervention following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, and informed the 2003 war against Iraq. In From 9/11 to Terror War (Kellner 2003) I sketched out the genesis and origins of Bush administration foreign policy and its application in Afghanistan and the build-up to the Iraq (...) war. In this study, I will update and develop my critique of the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes and its application in the 2003 Iraq invasion, concluding with a critique of unilateralism and militarism, and defense of multilateral and global solutions to problems such as terrorism, so-called “weapons of mass destruction,” and “rogue regimes.”. (shrink)

This special section on technology-in-use in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire strives to strengthen the dialogue between historians of the late Ottoman Empire and historians of technology interested in the way technologies were appropriated, domesticated, and used beyond the great centers of technological innovation, with a special emphasis on all kinds of users, including nonhuman ones. The ruling elites of this multiethnic and multireligious land empire strove to instrumentalize new inventions and techniques to improve the empire’s geopolitical (...) standing, but in an era marked by interimperial competition, by the rise of nationalism, and by the global expansion of capitalism, the circulation, appropriation, and use of these innovations and techniques proved far beyond their control. From steamships and railways to electricity, the focus is on the ways technologies were appropriated and used in the Ottoman Empire, how they were integrated into the everyday lives of the people, and how they shaped and were shaped by profit-making and political agendas, which reveals the rapid and enormous impact of new technologies on peripheral regions of the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Summer Davos’ meeting in China organised by the World Economic Forum is an annual event that brings together leading voices from the East and West in business, society, and politics. The economic-political challenges and geopolitical upheavals that intercepted temporarily and transnationally in the close-up to the 2016 Summer Davos meeting rendered this discursive event a site of particular political/ideological contestation. This study intends to make sense of the unobtrusive, pro- home-nation nationalist ideology manifested in the interpreted texts by (...) Chinese conference interpreters who bridge language gaps in situ in the meeting. These textual manifestations of nationalism are examined by interrogating how specific discursive strategies are deployed in connection with thematic contents about China, the interpreters’ home-nation, in relation to other countries. Fundamentally, Chinese interpreters’ nationalism finds its way into their linguistic means that realise their specific strategies of self-censoring, neutralising self-negativity, aggrandising self-positivity and accentuating the negative-other representation in relation to topics on national sovereignty, territorial integrity, diplomatic relations and economic/political positions, all of which are crucial to the interests of a nation. (shrink)

The article analyzes the development path of the energy sector of Azerbaijan over the past quarter century and its geoeconomic significance. The article jointly analyzes the geoeconomic parameters of Azerbaijan’s energy resources and their role in economic diversification for the first time. This analysis covers a certain period of time, during which new proposals are made, such as revising the importance of energy resources in the world and implementing the transition to green energy. Studying the material of the article allows (...) us to consider to a certain extent the nature of the global political course around energy resources and the dividends that it has brought and can bring in the future to Azerbaijan. On the eve of the COP 29 event, it is very important to analyze the positive impact of this event on the geopolitical influence of Azerbaijan and the benefits it brings to its geoeconomic interests. It can also serve as a kind of basic material for researchers conducting research in this direction. The importance of the energy sector in Azerbaijan's geoeconomic situation during the first decade of the 21st century can be explored through several dimensions, including the country's strategic position, its energy resources, and how these elements shaped its geopolitical influence and economic growth. The scientific innovation of this theme lies in understanding the transformational role that Azerbaijan's energy sector played not only in its national development but also in the broader regional and global geopolitical context. (shrink)

ArgumentThe process of institutionalization of Political Science in Brazil was conditioned by the country’s position in the geopolitical scenario proper to the Cold War, strongly affected by the influence of the USA and, later on, by the military dictatorship experienced between 1964 and 1985. The first Brazilian professionalized political scientists were, during their youth, anti-Stalinist revolutionary militants. They had been financed by the Ford Foundation to pursue their PhDs in the USA. In this paper, I argue that the north-American (...) model of ideological war included governmental and non-governmental institutions. Among the latter, the FF played a crucial role because it had a lot of credibility in state bureaucracy and was able to captivate the potential copartners, who would benefit from its grant, even the anti-American ones. The FF was able to do so because it was keeping a distance from the bellicose image of the USA. In this way, because Brazilian youngsters were leftist, the FF was interested in financing their studies. And, because they belonged to the anti-Stalinist left, they were more open than the communists and wouldn’t oppose to exchange with the USA. (shrink)

Undergirding China’s Belt and Road Initiative’s lofty promise of global connectivity are existing connections between the PRC’s implementation of planetary-scale observation systems for environmental sustainability and the recognizably nefarious policies of localized, colonial surveillance of Turkic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). My article examines how the recently alleged genocide in XUAR becomes the afflicted topos where both the rhetoric and practices of monitoring differently complex systems come together. Such complex connections require a recursive analysis, one which further (...) distinguishes between recursion as an actual technique used in remote sensing and algorithmic processes and recursion as a heuristic in discourses about these computational processes and their effects on controlled populations and territories. This article, following recent interest in the intersections of geopolitics, computational design, digital capitalism and colonialism, argues that the Chinese government’s multipronged investments in environmental sciences-related sensing and imaging technologies do not simply help track its own citizens and foreign populations but also how these groups are increasingly monitored by them. I examine how the Digital Belt and Road’s Science Plan frames the environment, including sovereign territories, peoples, and natural resources as data assets. The rest of my discussion turns away from state-sponsored Earth sciences to examine Anglophone media and human rights groups’ use of satellite imageries and databases to evidence the state’s construction of internment facilities and other surveillance mechanisms in XUAR. Alleged algorithms of oppression enclose the XUAR as a black box of the police state, but digital infographic interfaces like the Xinjiang Data Project, which attempts to expose the PRC’s relegation of Uyghurs to biometric and surveillance data, only furthers a recursive datafication of XUAR. (shrink)

The shroud of secrecy that the American administration has wrapped around Guantanamo Bay creates a kind of Rorschach test of political views that tell us much more about those holding these views than about the prison and interrogation center itself. But for those less interested in political propaganda, a review of statements on Guantanamo in the Arab country of Yemen reveals some interesting contradictions and complexities. Yemeni statements on Guantanamo reflect contemporary tensions in people's conceptions of national sovereignty, the political (...) interests of a weak state in global geopolitics and a developing conception of human rights in an emerging global social modernity. (shrink)

This book explores the changing tactics, technologies and terrains of 21st century war. It argues that the world in 2049 is unlikely to look like the climate change/AI dystopia depicted in Blade Runner 2049; but nor will it be a world where conflict and war has been transformed by a 'civilizing process' that eradicates violence and conflict from the human condition. 2049 is also the year that the US Department of Defense has suggested China will become a world-shaping military power. (...) All states will be engaged in 'arms races' across a variety of new tools and technologies - from drones, robotics, AI and quantum computing - that will transform politics, economy, society and war. Drawing on thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, the book suggests that future war will be shaped by three broad tendencies that include a broad range of tactics, technologies and trends; the Impure, the Granular and the Machinic. Through discussions of cybersecurity, urban war, robotics, AI, climate change, science fiction and new strategic concepts, it examines how these tendencies might evolve in the different geopolitical futures and types of war ahead of us. The book provides a thought-provoking and distinctive framework through which to think about the changing character of war. It concludes that for all the novel and dangerous challenges ahead, the futuristic possibilities of warfare will likely continue to be shaped by problems familiar to students of international relations and the history of war - albeit problems that will play out in geopolitical and technological contexts that we have never encountered before. This book will be of much interest to students of critical war studies, security studies, science and technology studies, and International Relations in general. (shrink)

On July 16, 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt boarded the USS Houston in San Diego and embarked on what would come to be known as the Third Presidential Cruise. Publicized as a presidential fishing trip, the 1938 excursion was considerably more than a summer vacation. Covering 5,888 miles in twenty-four days, it comprised fourteen stops in the territories of five different countries: Mexico, France, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Concluding in Pensacola, Florida, after passing through the Panama Canal, it was an (...) ambitious voyage that involved the intensive use of science as diplomacy, a mere thirteen months before the onset of World War II. On the surface, the cruise, whose collecting activities were supervised by the Smithsonian’s Division of Marine Invertebrates, was a major scientific coup. However, the expedition also had a clear geopolitical goal: to assess the United States’ naval capabilities in the Pacific and to formulate potential military strategies in the event of global war. Thus, the excursion illustrates how science and diplomacy can intersect at pivotal historical moments, and how it can be deployed to implement foreign policy based on military interests. (shrink)

In an age when the geopolitical dynamics are shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the reception of Asian sources in Europe could be seen as primarily of historical interest. At first sight, the interpretation of Chinese and Buddhist wisdom traditions in early twentieth-century Germany appears to bear little significance for contemporary concerns. In Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought, Eric Nelson proves this assumption wrong and demonstrates that the short-lived cosmopolitan glimmers in between the two (...) world wars set a standard for intercultural dialogue. The Sino-German philosophical encounter presents an exception to the cultural provincialism that has plagued... (shrink)

Social researchers have extensively addressed the immigration of one million Russian speakers to Israel/palestine over the past twenty-five years. However, the immigrants’ incorporation into the Israeli occupation regime and the ongoing colonisation of Palestine have rarely been questioned as such. In the interviews informing this article, Russian-speaking immigrant women living in Arab-Palestinian communities discuss their complex relations with Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli and Russian-Israeli communities. Sharing a background with Russian-speaking Jewish Israelis on the one hand, and marital kinship ties to Palestinians on (...) the other, these women encounter multiple boundaries of territory and identity in their everyday lives. Drawing on feminist border thinking, I explore these encounters as a navigation through geopolitical and epistemic borderlands in a dense colonial reality. I am particularly interested in the potential of such an exploration to question essentialism and destabilise binary ethno-national categories of identity, such as Arab/jew and Israeli/palestinian, that dominate not only hegemonic but also emancipatory discourses. These binary divisions are not a straightforward outcome of political regimes but rather the result of ongoing border-making processes, which are vulnerable to disorder and disruption. This perspective aims to enrich understandings of the roles that gendered ethno-national identities play in sustaining the colonial relations of power in Israel/palestine. (shrink)

Regardless of unpredictable and contingent geopolitical events such as last year’s surprising rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, this coming year will certainly witness a large surge in patriotism. The Winter Olympics in February, and the World Cup in the summer, both promise to whip national sentiments into a fever pitch. One other thing is certain, though: journals of philosophy and ethics will continue to debate the virtues of cosmopolitanism, as this number of Ethical Perspectives (...) does through its contributions below.Why is this? Why do philosophers and academics hold on to this idea of cosmopolitanism, an idea utterly lacking in the convictions of the general public? Is it perhaps because the first cosmopolitans were in fact philosophers? The first to identify himself as a cosmopolitan was Diogenes the Cynic, and Plato’s dialogues paint many of the Sophists in cosmopolitan hues. Although people generally support the idea of internationalism as far as it promotes trade, travel, and football tournaments, once it begins to meddle in internal affairs, as it does with outsourcing and transnational constitutions, they tend to fall back upon the patria. They killed Socrates for corrupting the youth of Athens, not the youth of the world.Whether it is the service and manufacturing industries of Asia and India ‘stealing’ American jobs, or widespread fears of Brussels’ legendary bureaucrats, the non-academic public consistently turns from its tepid embrace of cosmopolitanism to patriotism whenever threatened. Are we too quick to label this as self-interest or even selfishness? Or is there something else at work in the debate between cosmopolitanism and patriotism? Some approaches to cosmopolitanism are certainly guilty of an absolute removal of difference, of wishing away the nation state, of replacing it with an international body based on purely universal principles, and of wiping away the competencies of nations on many levels. The call for the world state can come across as an appeal for an anodyne and internationalist homogeneity based on a clinical morality that, for all its sensitivity, runs roughshod over the well-engrained cultural, legal, and social beliefs of many peoples.Clearly, this is what many Europeans fear, and to a large degree, Americans as well in their dislike for the International Court of Justice. Even the economic hegemony of outsourcing removes national power, and replaces it with pure economic rationality.Our contributors below do not advocate these reductions, although some may point to them. Key to each contribution below is sensitivity to the world as it is, to its need for difference even in the face of an ever-increasing globalisation that sometimes is connected with cosmopolitanism. Yet, every proponent of cosmopolitanism must sketch how it is possible in practice. Of course, an obvious problem is how to dwell consequently as a cosmopolitan. Not many contemporary cosmopolitans would be prepared to follow Diogenes’ commitment to rootlessness: living in exile after having been included in a forgery conviction aimed at his father, the ascetic Diogenes called a barrel his home. Such was his drive to live a levelled life that he cast away his only bowl upon seeing a poor peasant boy drinking from cupped hands. Today’s cosmopolitan leads a much more prosaic life, and hence the problem with cosmopolitanism begins as something mundane. Does not a cosmopolitan still pay national taxes? Does not a cosmopolitan still need a national passport and second country visas? But, the questions quickly turn ontological: how can one shed oneself of one’s nationality, of one’s belonging, as if it is just an accident of one’s own constitution, instead of as an important property of one’s own constitution? In other words, belonging is important: a citizen of the world still values citizenship. Clearly, the absolute cosmopolitan reduction is an absurdity: one is always rooted, in some sense. Even cosmopolitanism is rooted in a specific Western mindset, and is no self-evident preference of human existence.As Rudi Visker’s contribution so clearly shows through an investigation of the narcissism of minor differences, these questions revolve around the question of confrontation with alterity. What I am, in no small way plays off what I am not. I cannot be everything, if I am something. Freud’s analysis of minor differences reveals that members of a group identify with that group on the basis these minor differences. What is self-evident to a particular culture marks that culture off from another culture, a culture that by definition does not share the same set of the self-evident. To be a foreigner, as any ex-patriot can attest, is to stand outside of the self-evident, whether this means interpreting gestures, understanding commercial practices, or, as Freud would have it, staying on the correct side of national taboos. There is thus a dialectic of inner and outer, a dialectic which refuses a reduction of one to the other. As Visker puts it, recognising the stranger within oneself is quite different than recognising the stranger outside of oneself, and to confuse these as being the same is not only to misunderstand the very issue at stake, it is also a dangerous trivialisation of difference.But clearly, there is something viable and laudable in the idea of cosmopolitanism, since it stresses the universal moral community of humanity. Cosmopolitanism is an attempt to see all human subjects as subject to the same moral law. Indeed, the sort of federation to which cosmopolitanism leads, at least in a modified Kantian expression as Bert van Roermund tells us, even gives us good grounds to recognise the legitimacy and moral equivalence of states. Importantly, the international legal order does not draw its power from any supranational force, but from the choice of independent national actors to recognise it. Hence, this cosmopolitan order depends on nationhood, and good standing within this order depends on the degree to which a country decides to participate. Again, the universal here depends on well-rooted particularity, a particularity able to choose for the universal.What do we do, then, with outlaw nations, those nations that are hostile to the choice for the universal? Through a clear reading of Hegel, Paul Cobben proposes that the metric for a state’s legality is the measure to which it permits the moral freedom of its citizens to bloom. A free person requires a free legal order; only in such can a person obtain the full measure of human rights due. States that do not permit this blooming are illegitimate; they contradict the nature of the human person, and citizens dwelling under the yoke of these have the right to ask for outside assistance in removing this illegitimate power above them. However, for this plea to be met, two conditions must obtain: the oppressed people must have the wherewithal to form a political order after the removal of the illegitimate state, and the action must be grounded in the principles and support of a legal community, which in essence would be a world federation of states. In fact, it is morally incumbent upon all legal states to aim at such a world federation, upon pain of contradiction.Our duty to others does not end with the politically oppressed; the economically oppressed also lay a moral claim upon us. So, as Toon Vandevelde asks in his contribution, what about the global poor? The poor are hungry and in need of shelter and a future, but to address these issues at the level of rights is in a way heartless: what good does it do to legislate that everyone has the right to food, when this right can never be called upon, or enforced, in any meaningful sense? Moreover, approaches that demand non-prioritised generosity not only ignore the fundamental economic fact of scarcity, they also run the risk of creating the moral hazard of dependence on charity. The true cosmopolitan approach is the recognition of our common humanity and of our concomitant duty to help others as far as this help does not endanger us. This duty is compounded by the marginalisation of the poor through globalisation, a globalisation that they did not ask for. The extent of our help is indeterminate, but its direction is clear: it must aim to integrate those poor who wish it within our international systems, and so to ease their own transitions from poverty.Both Gil Anidjar and Maria Bonnafous-Boucher continue this theme of economy, but each from a highly specific viewpoint. Indeed, their contributions are perhaps somewhat darker, delving into an aspect of the unspoken underneath the choice for the universal. Anidjar begins with the relation between religion and economy within the interplay of Judaism and Christianity, whereas Bonnafous-Boucher focuses on the development of political economy through a Foucaultian lens. Although highly distinct contributions, both share the insight that the economy is now the central theme of our power structures, and that economy, isolated from questions of morality or justice, must likewise play a decisive role within the structure of cosmopolitanism, or, at minimum, the political unity of peoples. For, national government long ago ceded to a promiscuous mix of governance, and religion to economy. This nexus enthrones governance as an economic rationale stripped of all other trappings, and inscribes any possible cosmopolitanism within a framework of an aggressive capitalism, a kind of economic theology, a kind of hegemony in which state boundaries are essentially liquefied. Capital, after all, knows no boundaries. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, a World Health Organization‐initiated and United States‐funded project released lab‐reared mosquitoes outside New Delhi in the first large‐scale field trials of the genetic control of mosquitoes. Despite partnering with the Indian Council of Medical Research and investing significantly in outreach to local communities at the release sites, the project was embroiled in controversy and became an object of vehement debate within the Indian parliament and diplomatic contretemps between the United States and India. This early episode of (...) genetic control research demonstrates how a scientific collaboration was entangled in geopolitics and shaped by the legacy of colonialism. This historical case study has implications for public deliberation in the present, pointing to the challenges of shared decision‐making in the context of structural inequality, the way that a backdrop of military interest in a technology can impede trust, and the long‐term consequences of projects that foster mistrust. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CALL FOR PROPOSALS TRAUMA AND HEALING 12TH EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE MAY 24-31, 2024 The 12th East-West Philosopher’s Conference will explore the many dimensions of trauma and healing. While trauma can be physical, it can also be psychological, social, political, economic, and cultural—encompassing the immediate effects of global pandemics, the ongoing impacts of ethnic and gender bias, the intergenerational legacies of colonization and geopolitical strife, and the planetary ramifications (...) of anthropogenic climate disruption. Ours is an era in which differences of histories, cultures, and identities are engaged as sources of insight, but also one of retrenchment—a period of relational appreciation, but also one of schism. The global scientific community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a stunning example of human potential for empathetic collaboration in the face of global personal and public health trauma. Yet, the economic trauma of the pandemic has resulted in crumbling international alliances, deepening trade wars, and an unfortunate collective reinvestment in zero-sum endgame framings of geopolitics against which there is no vaccination and through which the terms of healing have become delinked from the restoration of global wholeness. These traumas do not stop shaping our lives when the immediate danger comes to an end. Traumatic pain remains stored in the memories of peoples and individuals, it populates their imagination and shapes horizons of possibility. Thus a philosophical exploration of trauma and healing is not only diagnostic of current problems but also a form of genealogy. We invite participants to reflect upon the relational complexity of both trauma and healing, critically and historically engaging concrete occurrences of trauma while also drawing out theoretical insights regarding healing that strengthens and empowers and resists the forms of personal and social amnesia that make the repetition of trauma so tragically common. Of special interest are panels and papers that explore the trauma and healing at all scales from the interpersonal, to the relational traumas experienced by nations at war and cultures in conflict, thus addressing the interplay of the private and public spheres, of ethics and economics, of the human and the natural sciences, and among disciplines, classes, genders, and generations. Panel and paper proposals are encouraged that explore trauma and healing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma of refugees, displaced and colonized peoples, trauma and healing in personal relationships, climate change as a form of trauma to the planet and its people, trauma and healing related to issues of gender and sexuality, and how philosophers of all traditions, ancient and modern, cross-culturally deal with trauma and healing. KEYNOTE PRESENTERS: Jin Y. Park, Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University, Washington DC, “Translating Violence.” Ato Quayson, Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University, CA, “The Ethnography of the Private Sphere: Trauma, Domesticity, and Healing in the Work of Toni Morrison.” We invite proposals for individual papers and panels. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to the Conference organizers via: [email protected]. Submission Timeline: November 1, 2023 Notifications of acceptance for abstracts and panel proposals received by November 1 will be sent out by December 15, 2023. We have established an early submission timeline to facilitate faculty applying to their own institutions for travel funding. Abstracts received after November 1, 2023, will be vetted as received, taking into consideration the late submission. The absolute deadline for abstract submissions is March 15, 2024. After this, we will not be able to accommodate additional proposals. Final Papers Due: April 15, 2024 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION AND LOGISTICS: Hosted in keeping with the Hawaiian Islands’ spirit of aloha, breakfast and lunch will be provided for all registered presenters, as well as an opening reception and final dinner. The Conference does not provide lodging or travel support, but economical lodgings of various kinds are readily available in Honolulu. ABOUT THE EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE: The East-West Philosophers’ Conference series is the premier forum for convening philosophers from across the academy who are committed to cross-cultural inquiry. The Conference is the oldest continuous international gathering in Hawai‘i and has been a model of productive collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i at... (shrink)