Communities of practice, impression management, and great power status: Military observers in the Russo-Japanese War

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-293
Author(s):  
Kiran Banerjee ◽  
Joseph MacKay
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Dual Effect ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
Modern War

AbstractMilitary attachés and wartime observers have received surprisingly little attention in international relations. Why do states exchange attachés, permitting uniformed foreigners to gather intelligence on their territory and during their wars? To explain, we adopt a broadly practice-theoretic approach, focusing on the individuals who developed the role by living it, showing how they both innovated a distinct military practice and established institutional legitimacy for attachés. We address an early historical case in which the practice proliferated: the Russo-Japanese War, throughout which observers represented multiple European states, on both sides of the conflict. Sometimes termed the first modern war, the conflict saw Japan's entry into the Eurocentric great power system. In this context, embedded attachés had a dual effect. On the one hand, a professional attaché community established itself: we show how local innovation by embedded officers, in the context of this structurally destabilising event, permitted the creation of a new institutional role that might otherwise have been impossible. On the other, the Japanese made use of the attachés as witnesses for Western governments, observing their performance of great power-hood, as they defeated Russia. The argument has implications for understanding both the military attaché system and communities of practice as such.

Die Logik des modernen Krieges und die Unternehmen: Überlegungen zum Ersten Weltkrieg

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Plumpe
Keyword(s):  
Social Consequences ◽  
German Industry ◽  
War Economy ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
Modern War ◽  
First World

AbstractThe First World War was a disaster for German industry but one it could not avoid. Once war had begun, the modern war of supplies developed a fatal dynamic. On the one hand, it destroyed or restricted civilian markets: on the other, it forced companies - as the price for their future existence - into becoming part of, or at least cooperating with the armaments industry in order to secure the reserves which seemed necessary for the return to a peacetime economy. The military and political policy thus cannibalized capitalist mass production without which the war of supplies could not have been waged. In the process they became dependent on the readiness of companies to cooperate and as a result the weight of private interests increased greatly during the war. Research has focused on this aspect for far too long: what appeared to be a kind of profit logic within the war economy was in fact the reflection of a situation in which companies had little choice but to participate in the war economy in order to secure their own future existence. Therefore the war was not driven by the greed for profits but it was the war with all its catastrophic social consequences that pushed the economy and society into ruin. If it had been the decision of business and industry, the war would not have taken place.

scholarly journals Strategy and slaughter

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Modern War

Colin Gray's ‘Clausewitz Rules, OK’ was the one contribution to the Interregnum special issue of this Review that engaged the problem of modern war in general. Issues of war and peace were represented only patchily in a volume aiming to reflect on the ‘post-Cold War’ decade, but put together before ‘9/11’ brought it to an abrupt end. The Balkans didn't play a large part in William Wallace's account of Europe; unstable Asian great-power rivalries and local wars, which could make Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter's ‘Pacific Century’ anything but pacific were barely noted; while Caroline Thomas wrote about the Third World without mentioning Africa's wars. The Middle East, Rwanda and genocide were not covered. Bruce Cumings' wise reflections on the military bases of American liberalism, a brief discussion of the ‘new interventionism’ by Geoffrey Hawthorn, and dutiful mentions of Kosovo across the chapters, hardly compensated for these omissions.

The One True religion in the Military

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Parco ◽  
Barry S. Fagin
Keyword(s):  
The One ◽  
The Military

The Dilemma between Aligned Expectations and Diversity in Innovation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timur Ergen
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Synthetic Fuel ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Technology Policies ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Innovation Processes

This chapter brings together arguments from economics, sociology, and political economy to show that innovation processes are characterized by a dilemma between the advantages of aligned expectations—including greater coordination and investment—and those of diversity, including superior openness to new technological possibilities. To illustrate the argument, the chapter discusses a historical case involving one of the largest coordinated peace-time attempts to hasten technological innovation in the history of capitalism, namely the US energy technology policies of the 1970s and 1980s. Close examination of the commercialization of photovoltaics and synthetic fuel initiatives illustrates both sides of the dilemma between shared versus diverse expectations in innovation: coordination but possible premature lock-in on the one hand, and openness but possible stagnation on the other. The chapter shows that even the exploration and interpretation of new technologies may be as much a product of focused investment as of trial-and-error search.

Making Geoeconomics an IR Research Program

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong Jung Kim
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Parsimonious Explanation ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The One ◽  
New Research

Abstract In contrast to growing public attention to geoeconomics as the new mode of conducting great power competition, the IR discipline has not actively engaged in conceptual and theoretical analysis from the geoeconomic viewpoint. This article examines issues that geoeconomics needs to solve to become a new theoretical framework in the positivist “American” IR scholarship that dominates research on great power competition. On the one hand, the concept of geoeconomics needs to be redefined and account for a phenomenon that is not already covered in extant IR scholarship. Thus, geoeconomics should be considered as a form of grand strategy and defined as the use of economic instruments to advance mid- to long-term strategic interests in a geographical region of the world. On the other hand, geoeconomics in positivist IR should take into account international economic structure and domestic politics in developing a parsimonious explanation for the conditions to employ geoeconomic grand strategy. In this process, the theorist needs to make an analytical choice to concentrate on certain factors and mechanisms to assure theoretical parsimony. This article concludes that addressing the issues of conceptual clarity and parsimonious theorization would potentially allow geoeconomics to become a new research program in positivist IR.

Hawks and Doves in the Education of Aboriginal Children

1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
P. Degens
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Good Time ◽  
White Children ◽  
Aboriginal Population ◽  
Educational Issue ◽  
Special Programs ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
Aboriginal Children

When I first moved to Coffs Harbour in 1972, I quickly became aware of the problems facing Aboriginal children in the school and community. Now, ten years later, seems a good time to review the position.Statistically there have been changes. The Aboriginal population in Coffs Harbour Shire is 1.6% of the total population, namely: males 200, females 194, total 394.The new Tyalla Primary which opened next to Orara High in 1978 has 29 Aboriginal pupils, while the Aboriginal population of Orara High itself has increased from 10 to 31 students (2 being in Year 11) in keeping with this school’s growth from only Years 7 – 9 in 1973, to a full secondary school by 1976.It appears that attitudes among teachers and white children have polarised. There are the ‘hawks’ and the ‘doves’. When these terms were invented during the Eisenhower years in the U.S.A., it was easy to tell a ‘hawk’ from a ‘dove’. The ‘hawks’ were those who favoured warlike measures and confrontation, while the ‘doves’ were those who wanted peace talks and mutual disarmament. These days it has become difficult to differentiate in the military aviary but in this educational issue there seems to be a marked line of division. On the one hand there are those who condemn as ‘racist’ any special programs of financial aid to assist Aboriginal children, ‘the hawks’, and on the other those who blame a white-dominated society for the problems Aboriginal children face, ‘the doves’.

Rwanda: Civil–Military Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Jowell
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Practical Experiences ◽  
The One ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

The army has been a central part of Rwanda’s political system from the precolonial period until the early 21st century and is intrinsically part of the construction and politics of the state. Civil–military relations in Rwanda demonstrate not only the central features of transitioning a rebel group to a national defense sector but also how some states construct their armed forces after a period of mass violence. Since the civil war and genocide in the early 1990s, the Rwandan military has been the primary actor in politics, the economy, and state building as well as in regional wars in central Africa and the Great Lakes region. Practical experiences of guerrilla insurgency and conflict in Uganda and Rwanda, postconflict military integration, and the intertwining of political and economic agendas with the ruling party have shaped civil–military relations in Rwanda and have been central to how the Rwandan defense sector functions. Contemporary Rwandan civil–military relations center around the two elements of service delivery and control, which has resulted in the development of an effective and technocratic military in terms of remit and responsibilities on the one hand, and the creation of a politicized force of coercion on the other hand. The military in Rwanda therefore reflects the pressures and dynamics of the wider state and cannot be separated from it. The Rwandan army is thus a “political army” and is part and parcel of the political structures that oversee and govern the Rwandan state.

scholarly journals Political Economy Theories in the Context of Defence Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatas Palavenis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Military Expenditure ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Historical Case Study ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Defence Industry ◽  
The Military

Object of the analysis. Increasing defence expenditures bring back a discussion weather the national defence industry is necessary to sustain economic welfare of a country, boosts innovations and enhances own military sector. Investigation problem. The use of political economy theories in that case could facilitate further research steps and guide scientists that will look for a precise answer to this issue. The aim of this manuscript is to review political economy theories that can be used in defining defence industry as such, and consider practical applicability options of different methodological approaches in the context of defence industry. To reach this aim, following objectives were designed: 1. Describe political economy phenomena and define its evolution; 2. Evaluate traditions of political economy and define their practical significance; 3. Assess methods used in actual analysis of defence industry and define the main findings. Research methods. While writing this article, the comparative literature analysis method was used. The famous scientists such as R. Abdelal, C., Adam, S. Dercon, G. Agostino, J. P. Dunne, L. Pieroni, M. Blyth, G. Browning, A. Kilmister, J. P. Dunne, E. Skons, D. Braddon, A. Gilpin, A. Goldstein, R. Jacson, G. Sorensen, S. Jevons, R. O. Keohane, C. W. Mitchell, I. D. Salavrakos, A. Sen and R. M. Smith were cited and referenced. All used literature is referenced. This article is structured into two big parts. The first part is devoted to the analysis of political economy subject itself and its approaches towards empirical research. The second part is designed to reveal possible application options of different theoretical political economy approaches in the context of defence industry. Outcomes and conclusions. In the context of current analysis of different political economy theories, different approaches on methodology, analytical side, linkage with defence industry, defence spending and possible insights about investigation possibilities the following conclusions were found: Political economy that originated in the XVII–XVIIIth century and currently is adopting different theoretical approaches in most cases is still relying on “grand” theories such as realism (mercantilism), liberalism, and Marxism. The existing variety of research methodologies and tools suggests the “correct” way to examine features of situation based on selected theory. Researches should be aware that even a proper methodology does not guaranty the reliability of research results due to the complexity of political economy subject itself and its interdependency to both political and economic science features. There are different scholars explaining trends and proposing different theoretical approaches to analyse defence sector and its connections (influence) with state. Current dynamics of defence industry led to renewed debates over whether the increase of the military expenditure enhances or deteriorates economic growth and welfare of the state. There have been numerous studies done in defining military expenditure (also research and development programs in the military sector) impact on local and state economies. Regardless of different methodologies used (econometric analyses, macro econometric models, time series models, demand side model, supply side model, cross-country correlation analyses and historical case study) there was no strong evidence that military expenditure is likely to have the negative economic effects on states. Keywords: political economy, defence industry, military expenditure, defence.

scholarly journals Pomiędzy tradycją zakonu a tradycją rodu – treści ideowe fasady kościoła Benedyktynek pw. św. Katarzyny w Wilnie

Artifex Novus ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Anna Sylwia Czyż
Keyword(s):  
Community Life ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Common ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Church ◽  
Grand Duchy

ABSTRAKT Sprowadzone do Wilna między 1616 a 1618 r. benedyktynki utworzyły niewielką i skromnie uposażoną wspólnotę. Ich sytuacja zmieniła się w 1692 r., kiedy to dzięki bogatym zapisom Feliksa Jana Paca mogły wystawić murowany kościół konsekrowany w 1703 r. Hojność podkomorzego litewskiego nie była przypadkowa, bowiem do wileńskich benedyktynek wstąpiły jego córki Sybilla i Anna, jedyne potomstwo jakie po sobiepozostawił. Z nich szczególne znaczenie dla dziejów klasztoru miała Sybilla (Magdalena) Pacówna, która w 1704 r. została wybrana ksienią. Nie tylko odnowiła ona życie wspólnoty, ale stała się również jedną z najważniejszych postaci ówczesnego Wilna. Po pożarze w 1737 r. Sybilla Pacówna energicznie przystąpiła do odbudowy klasztoru i kościoła, którą kończyła już jej następczyni Joanna Rejtanówna. Wzniesioną wówczas według projektu Jana Krzysztofa Glaubitza fasadę ozdobiono stiukowo-metalową dekoracją o indywidualnie zaplanowanym programie ideowym odwołującym się i do tradycji zakonnej i rodowej – pacowskiej. W fasadzie wyeksponowano ideały związane z życiem benedyktyńskim sytuując je wśród aluzji o konieczności walki na płaszczyźnie ducha i ciała, włączając w militarną symbolikę także konieczność walki z wrogami Kościoła i ojczyzny oraz charakterystyczną dla duchowości benedyktyńskiej pobożność związaną z krzyżem w typie karawaka oraz zOpatrznością Bożą. Jednocześnie przypominano o bogactwie powołań w klasztorze benedyktynek wileńskich przyrównując mniszki do lilii. Porównanie to dzięki obecności w fasadzie herbu Gozdawa (podwójna lilia) oraz powszechnego w XVII i XVIII w. zwyczaju określania Paców „Liliatami” można było odnosić także do ich rodu, w tym do zasłużonej dla klasztoru ksieni Sybilli. Tak mocne wyeksponowanie fundatorów było nie tylko chęciąupamiętnia darczyńców, ale wraz z całym architektonicznym i plastycznym wystrojem świątyni wiązało się z koniecznością stworzenia przeciwwagi dla nowego i prężnie rozwijającego się pod patronatem elity litewskiej klasztoru Wwizytek w Wilnie. Przy tym charakter dekoracji fasady kościoła pw. św. Katarzyny wpisuje się w inne fundacje Paców: kościół pw. św. Teresy i kościół pw. śś. Piotra i Pawła będąc ostatnią ważną inicjatywą artystyczną rodu w stolicy Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. SUMMARY The Benedictines, who had been brought to Vilnius between 1616 and 1618, formed a small and modest community. Thanks to the generous legacy of Feliks Jan Pac, in 1692 their situation changed as they could erect a brick church, which was then consecrated in 1703. The generosity of the Lithuanian chamberlain was not a coincidence; his two daughters, Sybilla and Anna, the only offspring he left, had joined the Benedictine Sisters in Vilnius. Sybilla (Magdalena) Pac, who became an abbess in 1704, was particularly important for the history of the monastery. Not only did she renew the community life, but she also became one of the most important personalities of the then Vilnius. After the fire in 1737 Sybilla Pac vigorously started rebuilding the monastery and the church, which was completed by her successor, Joanna Rejtan. The facade which was then erected after Johann Christoph Glaubitz’s design was adorned with stucco and metal decorations with a perfectly devised ideological programme which referred to the tradition of the order and to the one of the Pac family. The facade presented ideals connected with the Benedictine life, which placed them among the hints of having to fight at the level of spirit and body, incorporating among the military symbols also the need to fight the enemies of the Church and the state, and the typical for the Benedictine spirituality piety connected with the Caravaca cross and the Divine Providence. At the same time, it reminded of the Benedictine vocations comparing nuns to lilies. This comparison, due to the presence of the Gozdawa coat-of-arms (double lilie) and the common nickname of the Pac family in the 17th and 18th cc. “the Liliats”, could also apply to their lineage, including the abbess Sybilla and her services to the monastery. Exposing founders in such an emphatic way was not only the will to immortalise them, but was also, together with the entire architectural and artistic decor of the church, connected with the need to counterbalance the new and dynamicallydeveloping Visitation Monastery in Vilnius. At the same time, the nature of the facade decoration of the Church of St. Catherine is in line with other foundations of the Pac family: St Theresa’s Church and the St Peter and St Paul Church, and was the last significant artistic initiative of the family in thecapital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

scholarly journals A viagem entre o feitiço e a maldição

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Mário Matos
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

This contribution focuses on the multifaceted conceptualization of travel in Western cultural history. Several discourses will be addressed that, over time, have oscillated between the sceptical and restrictive on the one hand, and the truly admiring perspectives of the journey on the other. A number of visions of the phenomenon of travel under the binomial spell/curse will be analysed. The different contexts and historical factors that determined the value of travel will be exposed, from its great power of attraction to its restriction by inward looking religious and political systems.

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