scholarly journals Rethinking the Orwellian Imaginary through Contemporary Chinese Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 738-742
Author(s):  
Karen Fang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Technology Policy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Surveillance Technology ◽  
Contemporary Chinese Fiction ◽  
Surveillance Society ◽  
Three Body ◽  
Rising Power

Although George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ([1949] 2003) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World ([1932] 2006) have long offered contrasting paradigms in surveillance theory, little attention has been paid to how race and cultural difference operate in their respective regimes. This oversight is surprising given race’s centrality in surveillance theory and practice, and it is increasingly anachronistic in light of contemporary geopolitics and the rising power of non-Western states. By contrast, the best-selling and critically acclaimed novels The Fat Years (Koonchung 2013), The Three-Body Problem (Liu 20014), and Death of a Red Heroine (Xiaolong 2000) are all set in modern China and portray issues of surveillance technology, policy, implementation, and resistance previously associated with Western powers. Yet while these later novels’ Chinese settings offer radically different scenarios than our previous touchstones of surveillance imagery, their global popularity also demonstrates their vast resonance and accessibility. Indeed, in strong reaffirmation of Orwell’s and Huxley’s ongoing value—and the value of literature to surveillance theory more generally—these recent China-set novels collapse the Orwell and Huxley dichotomy to offer surprising glimpses into the more culturally diversified twenty-first century global surveillance society.

scholarly journals India’s Public Diplomacy in the Twenty-First Century: Components, Objectives and Challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Arijit Mazumdar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
First Century ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
International Broadcasting ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Rising Power

In recent years, several countries have made sustained efforts to project their ‘soft power’ abroad. Public diplomacy has been an important tool for this purpose. Public diplomacy involves activities usually undertaken by a national government to inform and influence foreign public opinion and attitudes in order to advance its foreign policy goals. Such activities include ‘nation-branding’, diaspora outreach, digital engagement, international broadcasting, and international exchange programmes, all of which are designed to promote a positive image and reputation of the country to a global audience. This paper discusses the role of public diplomacy in the service of India’s foreign policy goals during the twenty-first century. The practice of public diplomacy helps the country achieve two significant objectives. First, it helps allay any active or dormant fears within the international community about India as a rising power. Second, it helps India compete with other countries as it seeks to boost foreign tourist arrivals, attract foreign investment and secure new markets for its exports in an era of globalisation. This paper also briefly discusses some of the challenges associated with India’s use of public diplomacy.

scholarly journals Representing the People: British Democracy in an Age of Political Ignorance

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Parvin
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Widespread View ◽  
Political Decisions

The article evaluates the arguments presented in Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance and Achen and Bartels’ Democracy for Realists and their implications for democratic theory and practice. The article uses their work to shine a light on ongoing and contradictory trajectories of democratic reform in Britain at the local and national levels, and to argue against the widespread view that British democracy should be reformed in ways that give citizens more control over political decisions. These books point to ways in which democracy might be salvaged, rather than replaced, and in which British democracy in particular might be reformed in order to better meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, by focusing less on participation and more on representation. This requires a two-pronged strategy. First, that we reform liberal democratic institutions in ways which better harness the power of non-majoritarian institutions, strengthen formal epistocratic checks and balances, and embrace the move towards greater political elitism in order to appropriately constrain the popular will and to ensure rigorous scrutiny within a traditionally configured representative democratic system. Second, that we explore ways of incorporating citizens’ voices at different points in the democratic system in order to circumvent some of the problems these authors describe and to ensure that the strengthening of representative institutions does not unfairly marginalise citizens. Achen CH and Bartels LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brennan J (2016) Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Somin I (2016) Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, 2nd edn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES TO FUTURE MANAGERS OF SOCIO-CULTURAL ACTIVITIES AT THE PRESENT STAGE

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
Serhiy DANYLYUK ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Communicative Behavior

The need to review goals, objectives and teaching methods in the process of teaching foreign languages in Ukraine in connection with the rapid entry of Ukraine into the world community, which, in its turn, leads to changes in both general methodology and specific methods, and techniques in the theory and practice of teaching foreign languages is discussed in the paper. It is noted that the main purpose of learning a foreign language is the formation of a linguistic personality who is ready for real, productive com- munication with representatives of other cultures at different levels and in different spheres of life. At the forefront is the need for verbal support for intercultural communication. Emphasis is placed on the fact that an integrative approach to foreign language teaching is especially important in the context of intercultural dialogue, which assumes that the interaction of different worldviews presented by communicators in- cludes their logics, thinking, values and is not blocked but stimulated by mutual understanding, tolerance, positive attitude. It is emphasized that relations are intercultural if their participants do not resort to their own traditions, customs, ideas and ways of behavior, but get acquainted with other people’s rules and norms of everyday communication. Intercultural communication requires that the sender and recipient of the message belong to different cultures. It also requires participants in communication to be aware of each other’s cultural differences. In essence, intercultural communication is always interpersonal communication in a special context, when one par- ticipant discovers the cultural difference of another.It is also said that successful intercultural communication involves, in addition to foreign language proficiency, the ability to adequately interpret the communicative behavior of a representative of a foreign society, as well as the willingness of partic- ipants to perceive other forms of communicative behavior, understanding its differences and variation from culture to culture. The strategy of convergence of non-cultural knowledge is aimed at preventing not only semantic but also cultural failures in communication.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitan pleasures and affects; or why are we still talking about yellowface in twenty-first-century cinema?

2018 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Felicia Chan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Management Training ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Artistic Theory ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Cameron Crowe

It is now widely acknowledged that the postracial fantasies ushered in by Barack Obama’s two-term election success are now in tatters. Yet debates on yellowface casting practices in contemporary Hollywood (also said to have evolved into “whitewashing” practices), in such films as The Last Airbender (M. Night Shyamalan, 2010), Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015), Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016), Birth of the Dragon (George Nolfi, 2016), and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), have resurfaced in recent times. These press controversies seem almost anachronistic after a generation of “intercultural” artistic theory and practice, “diversity” management training, and numerous academic discourses on otherness and difference, including those on cosmopolitan theory and practice. This article reviews yellowface practices and debates in contemporary times and puts them in dialogue with cosmopolitan aspirations of being “open to difference”, and argues that the latter cannot be taken as self-evident. It offers a way of thinking about yellowface practice via cosmopolitan pleasures evoked largely through modes of consumption, which “hollow out” the subjectivity of the character being depicted. On the site of the intersection between representation and subjectivity is where the identity politics occurs, yet, rather than universalising the issue, the article argues that a cosmopolitan approach should take on board localised conditions and contexts of production and reception in ways that acknowledge the multilayered complexity of the issues at hand.

The Uses of Social Investment

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Political Question

The Uses of Social Investment surveys the emergence, diffusion, limits, merits, and politics of social investment as the welfare policy paradigm for the twenty-first century seen through the lens of the life-course contingencies of the knowledge economy and modern familyhood. Over a span of thirty-five contributions, The Uses of Social Investment revisits the intellectual roots, surveys the evidence of social investment progress in theory and practice, and looks at research methodology and normative philosophy. In addition, the volume also reviews the criticisms that have been levelled against the social investment perspective in the academic literature. In light of the progressive, and admittedly uneven, diffusion of the social investment policy priorities across all parts of the globe, many contributions address the pressing political question of whether the social investment turn will be able to withstand the fiscal austerity backlash that has re-emerged in the low growth aftermath of the recent global financial crisis.

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