Epistemological Exercises: Encyclopedias of world cultural history in twentieth-century Japan

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
MIRIAM KINGSBERG KADIA
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Third ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Encyclopedias are purportedly all-encompassing, authoritative presentations of information compiled mainly by experts for an audience of non-specialists. Believed to offer only universal ‘facts’, they have long been associated with objectivity. Yet, by arranging information into a usable form, encyclopedias inevitably convey particular ideologies and ideals. As a result, they offer a lens into the changing ‘truths’ upheld by or expected of readers. This article compares three successive, high-profile Japanese encyclopedias, each bearing the title Sekai bunkashi taikei [Encyclopedia of world cultural history]. Somewhat differently from today, the field of world cultural history purported to ‘objectively’ cover the widest relevant space (earth) and time (the human past). However, the specific concerns and commitments of world cultural historians changed greatly between the 1920s, when the first encyclopedia was published, and the 1960s, when the final volumes of the third series appeared. By looking closely at both the production and consumption of these texts, this article shows the deeply politicized ways in which ‘objective’ knowledge of the world was interpreted, implemented, marketed, and received by the Japanese public during the years of nation-building, imperial expansionism, and the Cold War.

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, 1961–1968

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregg A. Brazinsky
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

Even as the PRC sought to win over radical and neutralist Afro-Asian states through diplomacy, it also sought to gain prestige in the Third World by becoming a leader of revolutionary forces. The PRC befriended a diverse group of Afro-Asian and insurgents guerilla that espoused Maoist doctrines during the 1960s. They believed that doing so would help to spread Mao Zedong thought throughout the world, raising the status of both the PRC and its leader. America’s fear that insurgent victories in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Congo would enhance Chinese prestige and legitimate Maoism played a key role in precipitating some of the most dramatic and costly instances of U.S. intervention of the Cold War.

From global to local and back: the ‘Third World’ concept and the new radical left in France

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
World Concept ◽  
Radical Left

AbstractIn the second half of the twentieth century, the transnational ‘Third World’ concept defined how people all over the globe perceived the world. This article explains the concept’s extraordinary traction by looking at the interplay of local uses and global contexts through which it emerged. Focusing on the particularly relevant setting of France, it examines the term’s invention in the context of the Cold War, development thinking, and decolonization. It then analyses the reviewPartisans(founded in 1961), which galvanized a new radical left in France and provided a platform for a communication about, but also with, the Third World. Finally, it shows how the association Cedetim (founded in 1967) addressed migrant workers in France as ‘the Third World at home’. In tracing the Third World’s local–global dynamics, this article suggests a praxis-oriented approach that goes beyond famous thinkers and texts and incorporates ‘lesser’ intellectuals and non-textual aspects into a global conceptual history in action.

Democratic Fantasies vs. Cold War Realities

2018 ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
White House ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
National Review ◽  
The World ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

The strain of Black Nationalism that existed within the United Nations also worried conservatives as they monitored the evolution of events in Southern Africa. In their intense desire to rid the world of communism, other issues, such as race, were either marginalized or ignored. The chapter analyzes the three publications’ view of race as it relates to the issue of Rhodesia during the height of the Cold War. In ignoring the suppression of an entire race of people, Human Events and National Review contrasted what they perceived to be a stable, anticommunist, biracial society with the militarism and lawlessness that they argued defined the 1960s and 1970s. While the two conservative publications viewed Rhodesia as a model of biracial success, Commentary focused on the Carter administration’s dismissive attitude about the dangers of Soviet encroachment within the African hemisphere. The Right argued that the Carter White House, in its refusal to endorse Rhodesia’s 1979 parliamentary elections due to a lack of representation of militant nationalist groups, and its belief in the policy of détente, continued to send a message of American weakness and indifference to totalitarianism around the world.

Choosing to Intervene: US Domestic Politics and Moral Imperatives

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-505
Author(s):  
Roberta Haar ◽  
Lutz F. Krebs
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Third ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThe end of the Cold War meant fewer constraints on humanitarian intervention, and the third pillar of the nascent R2P norm suggests at least a moral imperative to intervene when another country’s population is threatened. Yet US leaders continue to shy away from protecting innocents outside of the United States from harm — despite the fact that presidential candidates often campaign on restoring America’s moral lead in the world and, in particular, on US responsibilities to avert mass atrocities. This paper investigates the extent to which US military intervention abroad is driven by domestic considerations. Using logistic regression analysis, we aim to explain decisions by Presidents Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. to send troops into harms way.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 263-280
Author(s):  
David L. Pike
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Number Of Individuals

The world after 1989 was not necessarily less likely to suffer cataclysmic destruction; however, the imagination of that destruction had moved to new hopes and fears. These new sites of imagination were not only filtered through and generated from the half century of nuclearity that had preceded them; they dwelt in its physical and fictional ruins. Far from receding into the past along with the Cold War that birthed it, the affordances of nuclear apocalypse have proliferated in the new millennium. And as their atomic origins continue to mutate, the process appears less as novelty or aberration than as an everyday matter of course. Dwelling in a permanently bunkered and postapocalyptic condition affords several insights that clinging to the fantasy of a preapocalyptic way of life surviving under the nuclear condition does not afford. Recognized as ontological, the bunker fantasy ceases to operate exclusively as a powerful tool for legitimating surveillance, separation barriers, and enclosure in the name of enhanced security. It can also help to understand the spatio-cultural history of the security imaginary that makes these measures welcome to some, tolerable to some, and abhorrent to others. It enables us to recognize apocalypse not solely as the cataclysmic, unique, and always deferred rupture in time that a nuclear war surely would be, but as an ongoing historical condition always affecting a certain—and substantial—number of individuals and groups within unequal societies, affecting them unequally, and affecting them in intersecting but not always commensurate ways.

New walls to keep the bad out: populism and the totalitarian psyche

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Psychic Development ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.

Mind Bending, Mental Seduction and Menticide: Brainwashing in British Spy Dramas of the 1960s

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Burton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Thought Control ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Scientific Background ◽  
Mind Control ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cultural Fantasy

Brainwashing assumed the proportions of a cultural fantasy during the Cold War period. The article examines the various political, scientific and cultural contexts of brainwashing, and proceeds to a consideration of the place of mind control in British spy dramas made for cinema and television in the 1960s and 1970s. Particular attention is given to the films The Mind Benders (1963) and The Ipcress File (1965), and to the television dramas Man in a Suitcase (1967–8), The Prisoner (1967–8) and Callan (1967–81), which gave expression to the anxieties surrounding thought-control. Attention is given to the scientific background to the representations of brainwashing, and the significance of spy scandals, treasons and treacheries as a distinct context to the appearance of brainwashing on British screens.

Nasser's Gamble

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Original Material ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Arab Spring

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

The 1945 World Order – Process with «Open» Continuation

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Bipolar Structure ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.

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