Desecuritisation, deradicalisation, and national identity in Afghanistan: Higher education and desecuritisation processes

This article assesses the processes and trends of desecuritisation through the deradicalisation of identity politics within the higher education sector in Afghanistan. It examines the desecuritisation of radicalisation through efforts directed at deradicalisation in the context of a securitised conflict environment. The article draws on the data generated through interviews and discussions with actors engaged with higher education. Higher education, while manipulated by numerous actors for ideo-political purposes, can function as a ‘desecuritisation’ and ‘deradicalisation’ mechanism by supplementing the statebuilding efforts, and more subtly, by providing a venue for critical teaching and learning processes. This article highlights that while the sector is typically a very low reconstruction priority, if addressed strategically, it has the potential to contribute to the desecuritisation of ethnic politics through the deradicalisation of ethnic grievances and hence function as a catalyst for effective and sustainable postwar recovery.

Listening to Soundscapes in Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975)

In his overview of Kurosawa Akira’s works, preeminent scholar of Japanese culture and film, Donald Richie, harshly evaluates the director’s 1975 film Dersu Uzala. Citing an increased emphasis on style over “a dynamic sense of character,” Richie argues that “Kurosawa has produced for the first time in his long and outstanding career a rather lifeless film.” Yet what is missed in Richie’s otherwise well-thought-out critique is Kurosawa’s increased concerns about the depictions of environments natural and urban through the film’s sound design. Produced in the early 1970s in the wake of serious environmental problems that plagued Japan’s rapid postwar recovery, the problematic relationship between humans and nature would have figured heavily in the minds of Kurosawa and his audience. In other words, listening to the meticulously crafted soundscapes of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala allows scholars to reevaluate its importance within Kurosawa’s career and Japanese history more generally.