scholarly journals Imagined Communities and Imaginary Plots: Nationalisms, Conspiracies, and Pandemics in the Longue Durée

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Siniša Malešević
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Religiously Based ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Reliable Sign

Abstract The outbreaks of major pandemics have historically been associated with the proliferation of conspiracy theories. This article explores what role conspiratorial narratives have played in the development of different “imagined communities” in the premodern, modern, and contemporary worlds. I argue that premodern conspiratorial narratives were mostly focused on eschatological and theological images, aiming to blame and delegitimise the religious Other. In these imaginary plots, spread of disease was interpreted as an attack on one’s religious beliefs. The prevalence of religious conspiracies helped reinforce religiously based, yet temporary, “imagined communities.” With the rise of nation-states and the decline of empires and patrimonial kingdoms, the periodic outbursts of epidemics gradually attained more nationalist interpretations. Hence in the modern era, pandemics often triggered the growth of nationalist conspiracies. In these narratives the threatening Other was usually nationalised, and even traditional religious groups became reinterpreted as a threat to one’s national security. In recent times, new technologies and modes of communication have created space for the emergence of global conspiracy theories. The onset of Covid-19 has been associated with the dramatic expansion of such conspiracies. Some scholars have interpreted this as a reliable sign that nation-states and nationalisms have lost their dominance. However, this article shows that many global conspiracies in fact reinforce nationalist ideas and practices and, in this process, foster the perpetuation of national imagined communities.

History-writing in Turkey through securitization discourses and gendered narratives

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-344
Author(s):  
Bengi Bezirgan-Tanış
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
History Writing ◽  
National Interests ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Turkish State

Since the official history-writing is a defining aspect for the formation and consolidation of nation-states, it is crucial to explore the attempts to legitimize particular discourses regarding historical atrocities. The selective representations of the past, in this regard, contradict counter-memories and propagate hegemonic patterns of remembrance and/or forgetting of past crimes. This article accordingly addresses how the representations of counter-memories as threats to national security and the silencing of gender-specific experiences and remembrances by sanctioned historical narratives become manifest in the history-making of the Turkish nation-state. By focusing on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as two cases of crimes against humanity, it is intended to discuss the shifting positions and roles that the Turkish state adopts in the remembering and forgetting of historical offences. The article argues that through prioritizing national security and national interests, the securitization of memory reconstructs collective traumas of distinct ethnic and religious groups on the basis of a nation-state’s perceived internal and external threats. It also claims that the competing voices of women and their distinct experiences and patterns of remembrance and forgetting past atrocities are suppressed for the sake of the preservation of national security. By incorporating the issue of gender into the debate on the securitization of memory, this article elucidates the mismatch between positions of femininity and masculinity within the official national historiography of the Turkish state.

National Security and Public Anxiety: Our Changing Perceptions

2010 ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Sir Richard Dearlove
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
Full Force ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the changing perceptions on national security and civic anxiety. During the Cold War and its aftermath, security was rather a simple and straightforward issue. The countries knew their enemies, where they are and the threats they presented. On the event that, the enemies's secrets were unknown, probing techniques were employed to determine the weaknesses of the enemy. This formulaic situation which seeped through in to the twenty-first century left little room for innovation. In fact, in some countries, security maintained at the Cold War levels despite criticisms that new and emerging national security threats should be addressed at a new level. Of the powerful nations, America maintained the role of a world policeman and adapted its national security priorities according to its perception of a new series of strategic threats; however these new security strategies were without a sense of urgency. However, the perception of global threats and national security radically changed in the event of the 9/11 attack. The sleeping national security priorities of America came to a full force which affected the national security priorities of other nations as well. In the twenty-first globalized world, no conflict remains a regional clash. The reverberations of the Russian military action in Georgia, the Israeli intervention in Gaza, and the results of the attacks in Mumbai resonates loudly and rapidly through the wider international security system. While today, nations continue to seek new methods for addressing new security threats, the paradox of the national security policy is that nation-states have lost their exclusive grip of their own security at a time when the private citizens are assailed by increased fears for their own security and demand a more enhanced safety from the state. Nation-states have been much safer from large-scale violence, however there exists a strong sense of anxiety about the lack of security in the face of multiplicity of threats. Nations have been largely dependent on international coordinated action to achieve their important national security objectives. National policies and security theory lack precision. In addition, the internationalization of national security has eroded the distinction between domestic and foreign security. These blurring lines suggest that the understanding of national security is still at the height of transformations.

scholarly journals Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Textual Cues ◽  
Twitter Users

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.

scholarly journals Exemplary Ethical Communities. A New Concept for a Livable Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5582
Author(s):  
Daniele Conversi
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental

This article argues that we need to look at living examples provided by non-state communities in various regions of the world that are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the maintenance of the Earth’s optimal thermal balance. These fully sustainable communities have been living outside the mainstream for centuries, even millennia, providing examples in the global struggle against the degradation of social–ecological systems. They have all, to varying degrees, embraced simple forms of living that make them ‘exemplary ethical communities’ (EECs)—human communities with a track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge and the capacity to survive outside the capitalist market and nation-state system. The article proceeds in three steps: First, it condenses a large body of research on the limits of the existing nation-state system and its accompanying ideology, nationalism, identifying this institutional–ideological complex as the major obstacle to tackling climate change. Second, alternative social formations that could offer viable micro-level and micro-scale alternatives are suggested. These are unlikely to identify with existing nation-states as they often form distinct types of social communities. Taking examples from hunter-gatherer societies and simple-living religious groups, it is shown how the protection and maintenance of these EECs could become the keystone in the struggle for survival of humankind and other forms of life. Finally, further investigation is called for, into how researchers can come forward with more examples of actually existing communities that might provide pathways to sustainability and resistance to the looming global environmental catastrophe.

Conclusion: “It Sends Its Bloodhounds Everywhere”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter examines the legacy of the CIA's drone war on U.S. counterterrorism, wider U.S. national security policy, and the conduct of America's rivals—both nation-states and terrorist groups. It contemplates the nature of technological progress, judging that innovations always introduce potential threats and opportunities in equal measure. Furthermore, while it is almost inevitable that terrorist groups will exploit drone technology for heinous ends, the technology also offers wider commercial and civilian society opportunities, just as previous transformative technologies, first developed for the purpose of taking lives, eventually came to transform them in positive ways. The use of drones to neutralize terrorists is best understood as the embodiment of America's long-term counterterrorism goal made possible by advancements in both technology and the willingness of the U.S. government to authorize the CIA in undertaking lethal counterterrorist actions.

scholarly journals Translated Transcripts From Covert Recordings Used for Evidence in Court: Issues of Reliability

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gilbert ◽  
Georgina Heydon
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
National Security ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Australian State ◽  
Using Data

Nation states increasingly apply electronic surveillance techniques to combat serious and organised crime after broadening and deepening their national security agendas. Covertly obtained recordings from telephone interception and listening devices of conversations related to suspected criminal activity in Languages Other Than English (LOTE) frequently contain jargon and/or code words. Community translators and interpreters are routinely called upon to transcribe intercepted conversations into English for evidentiary purposes. This paper examines the language capabilities of community translators and interpreters undertaking this work for law enforcement agencies in the Australian state of Victoria. Using data collected during the observation of public court trials, this paper presents a detailed analysis of Vietnamese-to-English translated transcripts submitted as evidence by the Prosecution in drug-related criminal cases. The data analysis reveals that translated transcripts presented for use as evidence in drug-related trials contain frequent and significant errors. However, these discrepancies are difficult to detect in the complex environment of a court trial without the expert skills of an independent discourse analyst fluent in both languages involved. As a result, trials tend to proceed without the reliability of the translated transcript being adequately tested.

Nation-States, Labor Immigration, and Migrant Rights

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ruhs
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
High Income ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Basic Approach ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Core Set ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the potential interrelationships between migrant rights and national policies for admitting migrant workers. It explains how we can expect high-income countries to regulate the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies. It develops a basic approach that conceptualizes the design of labor immigration policy in high-income countries as a process that involves “choice under constraints.” It shows that nation-states decide on how to regulate the number, selection, and rights of migrant workers admitted in order to achieve a core set of four interrelated and sometimes competing policy goals: economic efficiency, distribution, national identity and social cohesion, and national security and public order. Although their importance and specific interpretations vary across countries, and over time, the chapter argues that each of these objectives constitutes a fundamental policy consideration that policymakers can and do purposefully pursue in all countries.

Tectonic Microphonics

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Kirsten Paige
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Geophysical Data ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Important Index ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Human Labor ◽  
The Status

“Tectonic Microphonics” explores the politics of seismologists’ use of the microphone to listen to the deep, elusive sounds of the Earth in the years around 1900. It argues that seismological representatives of three emerging nation-states and empires—Italy, Japan, and Britain—used the microphone to lay claim to elusive geophysical data, encrypted in fleeting, earthly sounds. It suggests that seismologists’ enhanced knowledge of the subterranean movements of the Earth, a purported consequence of their microphonic aurality, represented a form of geopolitical currency. Such powers of prediction were viewed as an important index of national security and scientific development: the microphone thus represented an opportunity for occupants of seismic geographies (like Italy and Japan) to overcome what Deborah Coen has referred to as the “deterministic geography of security and risk” that, for some geologists, reduced them to the status of “barbarians.” At the same time, this article demonstrates that valorizing the civilizing consequences of this form of technologically mediated aurality relied upon extractive ecologies of capitalism and exploitative human labor that were often obscured by scientific users and their global networks of collaborators and enablers. As the article's concluding section shows, these activities came on the heels of the birth of one of the earliest ideas of the Anthropocene, circulated in the writings of an Italian geologist as a term for the agency of white, European, “steam-powered” men (a circumscribed Anthropos) over the Earth, its fossil resources, and its less-than-human laborers. This article concludes by arguing that the microphone established a standard of anthropogenic aurality fit for the birth of the age of the Anthropocene.

The Mirror Has Two Faces

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Shefali Virkar
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Winner Takes All ◽  
And Control ◽  
Innate Ability

The Information Revolution has greatly impacted how nation-states and societies relate to one another; particularly wherein new, or hitherto less powerful, actors have emerged to bypass and influence established channels of power, altering the manner in which nation-states define their interests, power bases, security, and increasingly, their innate ability to govern and control flows of information. This book chapter investigates the ‘winner-takes-all' hypothesis relative to how the Internet, its associated platforms, and technologies have been harnessed to enhance the activities of both transnational terrorist networks and the organisations, clusters, and individuals dedicated to researching and combating them. The issues covered by this research raise important questions about the nature and the use of technology by state and non-state actors in an asymmetric ‘information war'; of how ideas of terrorism, surveillance, and censorship are conceptualised, and manner in which the role of the nation-state in countering and pre-empting threats to national security has been redefined.

scholarly journals Terrorism as war by other means: national security and state support for terrorism

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faruk Ekmekci
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
National Security ◽  
Conventional Approach ◽  
State Support ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Face ◽  
State Actors

The conventional approach in the discipline of International Relations is to treat terrorist organizations as "non-state" actors of international relations. However, this approach is problematic due to the fact that most terrorist organizations are backed or exploited by some states. In this article, I take issue with the non-stateness of terrorist organizations and seek to answer the question of why so many states, at times, support terrorist organizations. I argue that in the face of rising threats to national security in an age of devastating wars, modern nation states tend to provide support to foreign terrorist organizations that work against their present and imminent enemies. I elaborate on my argument studying three cases of state support for terrorism: Iranian support for Hamas, Syrian support for the PKK, and American support for the MEK. The analyses suggest that, for many states, terror is nothing but war by other means.

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