scholarly journals Secrecy and Subjectivity: Double Agents and the Dark Underside of the International System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Lundborg
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
International System ◽  
State System ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Double Agent

Abstract Drawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a “dark underside” of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's main point of entry when analyzing these spaces is the intimate connection between secrecy and subjectivity. While secrecy as a social practice has received increased attention in sociological accounts of secret intelligence, the constitutive role of secrecy in relation to subjectivity is a much less explored theme. This theme, it is argued, becomes especially valuable for thinking about the conflicting lines that constitute the life and becoming of the double agent. In particular, it can be drawn on to show how this subject both is captured by the transparent norms and limits of the international state system and effectively transgresses those limits. In this way, rather than upholding a dichotomy of secrecy and transparency as two separable sides of the international system, the double agent emerges as a disruptive figure calling for its deconstruction.

State Development, Parity, and International Conflict

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOUGLAS M. GIBLER
Keyword(s):  
International Conflict ◽  
International System ◽  
State System ◽  
Statistical Relationship ◽  
System State ◽  
State Development ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Over Time

This article explains the empirical connection between dyadic capability differences and international conflict as a consequence of how, when, and where states enter the international system. State capabilities are largely static, and, since states enter the system in geographic clusters, the processes of state maturation affect contiguous and regionally proximate states similarly. This makes dyadic capability differences static as well. The lack of change in capability differences over time suggests that the parity-conflict relationship is largely a product of the factors associated with state system entry. Indeed, as I demonstrate, several different proxies for the conditions of state system entry separately eliminate any statistical relationship between parity and militarized dispute onset, 1816–2001. I also find no relationship between parity and the wars that have occurred during that same time period. These results have a number of implications for the role of power and capabilities in explaining international conflict.

The alleged consensus: Italian elites and publics on foreign policy

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-182
Author(s):  
Francesco Olmastroni
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International System ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Willingness To Use

The article compares the way Italian (governmental and political) elites and (organized and general) publics perceive the international system and conceive of the role of Italy in it by using anad hocsurvey conducted specifically for this study. In order to establish whether a horizontal (left-right) and vertical (top-down) consensus exists on foreign policy, special attention has been paid to divergence and convergence patterns in terms of threat perception, feelings towards the (American and European) allies, support for the main institutional mechanisms of coordination and cooperation, and willingness to use military power to defend the constituted order and the national interest, while controlling for the position and level of action of each actor within the foreign policy-making process as well as her or his ideological orientation. While tracing elites’ and publics’ attitudes towards a wide range of foreign policy and security issues, the article reveals the effect of ideological and situational factors on the strategic preferences of national policy-makers and public opinion. In doing this, it contributes to define both the substance and boundaries of the alleged consensus, based on shared norms and historical legacies, supposedly overcoming socio-economic and political cleavages in matters of foreign policy.

scholarly journals Examining the Institutional Ethnographer’s Toolkit.

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.L. Deveau
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ruling Relations ◽  
Ontological Shift ◽  
Work Education ◽  
Education Nursing

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a method of inquiry advocated by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith and a wide range of researchers working in sociology, social work, education, nursing, political organizing, social policy, women’s organizations, and so on. Institutional ethnographers do not cede authority to ideas established in the literature. Instead, they rely on people’s experience as the point of entry into inquiry exploring connections among local settings of people’s everyday lives, institutional processes, and translocal ruling relations. Smith’s concept of ‘ruling’ is derived from Marx. IE relies on a theorized way of exploring ruling practices—as people’s social activities organized through texts, language and expertise. This article defines some of the concepts of which newcomers to institutional ethnography need to develop a working knowledge, namely: epistemology (and epistemological shift), ontology (and ontological shift), social organization, social relations, ruling relations, the role of texts in ruling relations, ideology, problematic, discourse, experience as data, interviewing, and data collection.

scholarly journals Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
Daniel Martin Varisco
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The anthropological literature on Yemen has had little to say about the classof sadah (plural of sayyid) who dominated the Zaydi imamate in NorthYemen from the tenth century until 1962. Gabriele vom Bruck’s account ofthe sadah, based on interviews and an extended stay in Yemen starting in1983, includes a wide range of information on perceptions of this class,especially after the 1962 revolution, with an emphasis on how personal identityis established and attitudes about marriage with non-sadah. There is anextensive bibliography of western sources, but little indication of the widerange of relevant Arabic sources available. It should be noted that vomBruck almost totally ignores the sadah of southern Yemen as well as of theTihama, although her text sometimes reads as if it were describing a genericclass of sadah for Yemen as a whole.  The author’s stated goal is “to examine the relationship of experience,social practice, and moral reasoning among the hereditary elite in the contextof revolutionary change” (p. 5). Her theoretical focus is on the social processof remembrance as the sadah were forced into new roles after the imamate’sdemise. Vom Bruck argues that we should avoid “a monolithic understandingof sayyid as a ‘vessel of charisma’ and ‘paragon of piety’” (p. 250) and suggeststhat the “descent metaphor” (p. 6) was the “principle self-defining criterion”of the sadah as well as the “core of the Imamate’s political culture.”(p. 6) However, the idiom of descent has also been the defining feature ofYemen’s tribes, so the role of descent per se is less relevant as a distinguishingmarker than how the sadah relate to other social categories.Although the relationship with tribesmen is mentioned at several points,it is not analyzed in depth apart from anecdotal evidence. For example, it ishighly problematic to label musicians al-akhdam (p. 44), who were actuallyquite rare in Zaydi towns and villages, a nuanced pariah category. There islittle sense of how the sadah fit into actual communities, and no effectiveintegration of the available literature previously published on Yemeni socialcategories (including Tomas Gerholm’s Market, Mosque, and Mafraj [StockholmUniversity Press: 1977] and Eduard Glaser’s important late-nineteenthcentury articles) ...

The Problem of Identifying and Modeling the Relationship between Monetary Factor and Inflation in the Russian Economy

2008 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
A. Porshakov ◽  
A. Ponomarenko
Keyword(s):  
Money Supply ◽  
Money Demand ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supply Side Factors

The role of monetary factor in generating inflationary processes in Russia has stimulated various debates in social and scientific circles for a relatively long time. The authors show that identification of the specificity of relationship between money and inflation requires a complex approach based on statistical modeling and involving a wide range of indicators relevant for the price changes in the economy. As a result a model of inflation for Russia implying the decomposition of inflation dynamics into demand-side and supply-side factors is suggested. The main conclusion drawn is that during the recent years the volume of inflationary pressures in the Russian economy has been determined by the deviation of money supply from money demand, rather than by money supply alone. At the same time, monetary factor has a long-run spread over time impact on inflation.

Introduction: Emotion, History and the Arts

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Sullivan ◽  
Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild
Keyword(s):  
Historical Change ◽  
Carson Mccullers ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Review Section ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
War Correspondents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Johan Huizinga

This introduction surveys the rise of the history of emotions as a field and the role of the arts in such developments. Reflecting on the foundational role of the arts in the early emotion-oriented histories of Johan Huizinga and Jacob Burkhardt, as well as the concerns about methodological impressionism that have sometimes arisen in response to such studies, the introduction considers how intensive engagements with the arts can open up new insights into past emotions while still being historically and theoretically rigorous. Drawing on a wide range of emotionally charged art works from different times and places—including the novels of Carson McCullers and Harriet Beecher-Stowe, the private poetry of neo-Confucian Chinese civil servants, the photojournalism of twentieth-century war correspondents, and music from Igor Stravinsky to the Beatles—the introduction proposes five ways in which art in all its forms contributes to emotional life and consequently to emotional histories: first, by incubating deep emotional experiences that contribute to formations of identity; second, by acting as a place for the expression of private or deviant emotions; third, by functioning as a barometer of wider cultural and attitudinal change; fourth, by serving as an engine of momentous historical change; and fifth, by working as a tool for emotional connection across communities, both within specific time periods but also across them. The introduction finishes by outlining how the special issue's five articles and review section address each of these categories, while also illustrating new methodological possibilities for the field.

Short Films from a Small Nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Public Information ◽  
Industrial Process ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Art And Architecture

The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational film, this book traces how Danish shorts on topics including social welfare, industry, art and architecture were commissioned, funded, produced and reviewed from the inter-war period to the 1960s. For three decades, state-sponsored short filmmaking educated Danish citizens, promoted Denmark to the world, and shaped the careers of renowned directors like Carl Th. Dreyer. Examining the life cycle of a representative selection of films, and discussing their preservation and mediation in the digital age, this book presents a detailed case study of how informational cinema is shaped by, and indeed shapes, its cultural, political and technological contexts.The book combines close textual analysis of a broad range of films with detailed accounts of their commissioning, production, distribution and reception in Denmark and abroad, drawing on Actor-Network Theory to emphasise the role of a wide range of entities in these processes. It considers a broad range of genres and sub-genres, including industrial process films, public information films, art films, the city symphony, the essay film, and many more. It also maps international networks of informational and documentary films in the post-war period, and explores the role of informational film in Danish cultural and political history.

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods of Studying the Processes of Socialization of a Modern Teenager

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-109
Author(s):  
Svetlana Alekseevna Raschetina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Family ◽  
Modern Family ◽  
Making Friends ◽  
Main Support

Relevance and problem statement. Modern unstable society is characterized by narrowing the boundaries of controlled socialization and expanding the boundaries of spontaneous socialization of a teenager based on his immersion in the question arises about the importance of the family in the process of socialization of a teenager in the conditions of expanding the space of socialization. There is a need to study the role of the family in this process, to search, develop and test research methods that allow us to reveal the phenomenon of socialization from the side of its value characteristics. The purpose and methodology of the study: to identify the possibilities of a systematic and anthropological methodology for studying the role of the family in the process of socialization of adolescents in modern conditions, testing research methods: photo research on the topic “Ego – I” (author of the German sociologist H. Abels), profile update reflexive processes (by S. A. Raschetina). Materials and results of the study. The study showed that for all the problems that exist in the family of the perestroika era and in the modern family, it acts for a teenager as a value and the first (main) support in the processes of socialization. The positions well known in psychology about the importance of interpersonal relations in adolescence for the formation of attitudes towards oneself as the basis of socialization are confirmed. Today, the frontiers of making friends have expanded enormously on the basis of Internet communication. The types of activities of interest to a teenager (traditional and new ones related to digitalization) are the third pillar of socialization. Conclusion. The “Ego – I” method of photo research has a wide range of possibilities for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the socialization process to identify the value Pillars of this process.

Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Victorian Art ◽  
Victorian Science ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, it demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, the book addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction—specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire—it discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, it demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.

Role of Cardiac MRI in Detecting Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Review

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Marymol Koshy ◽  
Bushra Johari ◽  
Mohd Farhan Hamdan ◽  
Mohammad Hanafiah
Keyword(s):  
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Genetic Disorder ◽  
Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Proper Diagnosis ◽  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Mri ◽  
Potential Use

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a global disease affecting people of various ethnic origins and both genders. HCM is a genetic disorder with a wide range of symptoms, including the catastrophic presentation of sudden cardiac death. Proper diagnosis and treatment of this disorder can relieve symptoms and prolong life. Non-invasive imaging is essential in diagnosing HCM. We present a review to deliberate the potential use of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging in HCM assessment and also identify the risk factors entailed with risk stratification of HCM based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

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