Uncommon Futures

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Valentine ◽  
Amelia Hassoun
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Temporal Focus

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, Munn (1992) argued that anthropology had neglected the future as a temporal focus. This concern continues to be echoed by anthropologists, even as a review of post–Cold War anthropology reveals that the future has become a recurrent, dominant temporality in the field. Reviewing texts from the past quarter-century that provide a diagnostic at the intersection of the anthropology of futurity and the future of anthropology, we argue that the urgency for an anthropology of the future—and concern over its neglect—presumes some continuity prior to the challenges of an uncertain “now” under constant transformation and, simultaneously, a desire for a common and open future world. Deriving this insight from the work of Black and Indigenous scholars, we suggest that an anthropology attuned to futures is most fruitful when it foregrounds decolonizing perspectives on commonality, continuity, and openness and problematizes them as the implicit grounds of anthropological futurity.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Differences in temporal reasoning

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Flexibility ◽  
Shrinking City

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.

Cold War Legacies: The Migration and Transformation of Popular/Unpopular Culture

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
Roger Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Context ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

This article reviews two recent collections of essays that focus on the role of popular culture in the Cold War. The article sets the phenomenon into a wide international context and shows how American popular culture affected Europe and vice versa. The essays in these two collections, though divergent in many key respects, show that culture is dynamic and that the past as interpreted from the perspective of the present is often reworked with new meanings. Understanding popular culture in its Cold War context is crucial, but seeing how the culture has evolved in the post-Cold War era can illuminate our view of its Cold War roots.

scholarly journals Doomed to Repetition? Havana, Washington, Miami, and Moscow, from the Cold War to Today

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Radoslav Yordanov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Competitive Coexistence ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War

This paper offers a broad historical overview of US economic sanctions against Cuba, starting with the imposition of the partial trade embargo on 19 October 1960, taking the story up to the present day. Additionally, it develops a comprehensive survey of the numerous scholarly and policy debates which closely follow the changes in United States’ post-Cold War attitudes and actions towards its southern neighbor and which demonstrate the thinking behind centers of power in Washington and Miami related to US’ Cuba policies. The paper also glances over the latest developments under Cuba’s new President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the notable return to the harsh Cold War rhetoric, which transcends the boundaries of the localized Washington-Miami-Havana axis of the past thirty years. Referring to historic patterns, the paper concludes that the conjecture between the recent complication in the US-Cuba relations and Moscow’s ambition to reinstate its erstwhile position as an unavoidable international factor would afford Havana with the opportunity to reclaim once again the dubious honor of becoming one of the focal points in the renewed competitive coexistence between the United States and Russia.

Behind Clio's Mask: Philosophic History and Its Uses Today

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 153-169
Author(s):  
Ralph Buultjens
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Familiar Form ◽  
Entire Picture

Buultjens examines the utility of history as a paradigm on which to build a prognosis of the future. With examples from the past, the discussion centers around two fundamentals. First, historical patterns may prove to be faulty models as they tend to focus on clusters of events and, usually, on the leaders/victors of that era, hence not representing the entire picture. These leaders, says Buultjens, are typically MCGA-egoists who influence international politics through their personal motives. Second, these historic clusters seldom contain elements yielding enduring or transferable conclusions upon which to build valid prognoses for the future. From historical patterns, several trends emerge: (1) the phaseout of conflict after the Cold War; (2) modern government and media culture prevent the emergence of “political supermen” and minimize disruption; (3) democracy, in its familiar form, curtails its rate of expansion; and (4) the spirit of separatism permeates as a result of collapse of yet another empire. The author is not in favor of disregarding historical analyses, but rather in questioning messages it provides so as not to extract erroneous lessons.

scholarly journals Strategic Interest and Media: A Global Perspective

PREDESTINASI ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Davina Nyiam
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War

Media has also been used as psychological warfare and a propaganda tool, particularly during times of wars and acts of insurgency. It has been used as a tool while fighting the wars and boosting the morale of the security forces across the nations. Propaganda, although it has existed almost indefinitely, has grown immensely during the past few centuries as a most strategic tool to guard the strategic interests of the nations. The propaganda was bolstered by the invention of the radio. The ability to communicate orally with a large number of people in a very small amount of time also helped the development of propaganda. This form of mass media has been used as the most effective tool with the government agencies to put forth their news and views. Radio has strategically suited governments across the globe to fight psychological wars by airing propaganda into the territories of the neighbouring countries. Since Radio is affordable and speaks in a local language and customs to a very common man, it has definitely an edge over other formats of communication when it comes to the question of guarding the strategic interests of a nation. This research discusses and deals with the strategic interests and the media and how radio has especially been used worldwide as a tool by a number of countries to safeguard their national interests. This chapter touches upon some theories and elements of propaganda, the use of radio during world wars and how countries guarded their strategic interests in the Cold War and Post-Cold War era.

scholarly journals Change in and through practice: Pierre Bourdieu, Vincent Pouliot, and the end of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Tobias Wille
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Fundamental Uncertainty ◽  
The Cold War

The end of the Cold War led to intense debates about how change happens in international politics. In this article, we argue that practice theory has great potential for illuminating this question. Drawing on Vincent Pouliot's empirical analysis of NATO-Russia relations after the end of the Cold War, we elaborate how change happens in and through practice. We show that post-Cold War security practices are inherently unstable, because there is a fundamental uncertainty about whether the Cold War is really over or whether the Cold War logic of bipolar confrontation still applies. Uncertainty about the meaning of the past destabilizes present practices and thus makes sudden and drastic change possible. To date, many contributions to the literature on international practices have, however, failed to grasp the inherent instability of practice. We argue that this failure is due to a particular conception of change that can be found in the works of Pierre Bourdieu. Through a close reading of Pouliot's Bourdieusian analysis of post-Cold War politics, we demonstrate the limitations of such a perspective, notably that it is unable to grasp how change originates in practice.

The Future of the World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

The book is devoted to the intriguing post-war activity called—with different terms—futurism, futurology, future research, or futures studies. It seeks to understand how futurists and futurologists imagined the Cold War and post-Cold War world and how they used the tools and methods of future research to influence and change that world. Forms of future research emerged after 1945 and engaged with the future both as an object of science and as an object of the human imagination. The book carefully explains these different engagements with the future, and inscribes them in the intellectual history of the post-war period. Futurists were a motley crew of Cold War warriors, nuclear scientists, journalists, and peace activists. Futurism also drew on an eclectic range of repertoires, some of which were deduced from positivist social science, mathematics, and nuclear physics, and some of which came from new strands of critical theory in the margins of the social sciences or sprung from alternative forms of knowledge in science fiction, journalism, or religion. Different forms of prediction lay very different claims to how, and with what accuracy, futures could be known, and what kind of control could be exerted over coming and not yet existing developments. Not surprisingly, such different claims to predictability coincided with radically different notions of human agency, of morality and responsibility, indeed of politics.

The Rise and Decline of the Post-Cold War International Order

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

This books surveys the evolution of the international order in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War through the prism of developments in key regional and functional parts of this “liberal international order 2.0” (LIO 2.0) and the roles played by two key ordering powers, the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Among the partial orders analyzed in the individual chapters are the regions of Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia and the international regimes dealing with international trade, climate change, nuclear weapons, cyberspace, and international public health emergencies, such as SARS and Zika. To assess developments in these various segments of the LIO 2.0, and to relate them to developments in the two other crucial levels of political order, order within nation-states and at the global level, the volume develops a comprehensive, integrated framework of analysis that allows systematic comparison of developments across boundaries between segments and different levels of the international order. Using this framework, the book presents a holistic assessment of the trajectory of the international order over the last decades, the rise, decline, and demise of the LIO 2.0, and causes of the dangerous erosion of international order over the last decade.

4. The Middle East Since the Cold War: Movement without Progress

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-104
Author(s):  
Bahgat Korany
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Security Patterns ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Arab Israeli Conflict ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter focuses on the Middle East during the post-Cold-War era. It introduces some the key themes that have come to dominate contemporary international relations of the Middle East: oil; new and old conflicts; the impacts of globalization; and religio-politics. In considering the major security patterns and trends in the Middle East, one finds a number of enduring issues, such as the Arab–Israeli conflict and border disputes. At the same time, one can see elements of change, both within these conflicts and with the emergence of recent threats, such as Iranian nuclearization, with profound consequences for regional alliance structures. As old and new security issues mingle in the geopolitical order, events of the past few years reflect a region dominated by conflict clusters. It is no surprise then that the Middle East remains a highly militarized region.

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