The role of the officers’ mess in inclusive military leader social identity construction

Leadership is fundamentally a social phenomenon, and a leader’s legitimacy in personal and social terms is determined partly by how effectively they incorporate the prototypical leader identity. Using the historical British officers’ mess as a case study, this article presents a conceptual examination of the function place can perform in the construction of collective leader identities and the interconnected influence shared history, materiality and social interaction can have in encouraging inclusivity in leadership. Leadership identity is an integral feature of military life which has historically drawn on complex cultural and legal traditions to underwrite the individual’s right to command. This article will argue that social places such as the officers’ mess have been utilised as a means of cultivating cohesion in the past and that they may have an application in furthering inclusive collective leader identities in the future.

The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era

The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era returns to the historical moment of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema to investigate the phenomena of queer biopic films produced during the late 1980s–early 1990s. More specifically, the book asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. While film critics and historian typically treat the biopic as a conservative, if not cliché, genre, queer filmmakers have frequently used the biopic to tell stories of queer lives. This project pays particular attention to the genre’s queer resonances, opening up the biopic’s historical connections to projects of education, public health, and social hygiene, along with the production of a shared history and national identity. Queer filmmakers’ engagement with the biopic evokes the genre’s history of building life through the portrayal of lives worthy of admiration and emulation, but it also points to another biopic history, that of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open up the potential for new means of connection and relationality. The book features fresh readings of the cinema of Derek Jarman, John Greyson, Todd Haynes, Barbara Hammer, and Tom Kalin. By calling for a reappraisal of the queer biopic, the book also calls for a reappraisal of New Queer Cinema’s legacy and its influence of contemporary queer film.

Drawing Imperial Lines: Sovereignty and Tacitus’ Germanicus

This essay focuses on Germanicus’ performance of sovereign power in Tacitus’ Annales 1-2. That power is seen in the differentiation of citizen from non-citizen and Roman territory from non-Roman territory. Roman violence in Germany contrasts with Germanicus in the East. There he recognised a shared history and community. Sovereign power required a recognition of the sovereign by the citizen and of the citizen by the sovereign. An individual’s membership and a territory’s place within the Roman Empire depended not on innate characteristics but political negotiation. Ancient political geographies gave primacy to the political rather than the territorial in determining citizenship.

The Apparent Tail of the Galactic Center Object G2/DSO

Observations of the near-infrared excess object G2/DSO increased attention toward the Galactic center and its vicinity. The predicted flaring event in 2014 and the outcome of the intense monitoring of the supermassive black hole in the center of our Galaxy did not fulfill all predictions about a significantly enhanced accretion event. Subsequent observations addressed the question concerning the nature of the object because of its compact shape, especially during its periapse in 2014. Theoretical approaches have attempted to answer the contradictory behavior of the object, resisting the expected dissolution of a gaseous cloud due to tidal forces in combination with evaporation and hydrodynamical instabilities. However, assuming that the object is instead a dust-enshrouded young stellar object seems to be in line with the predictions of several groups and observations presented in numerous publications. Here we present a detailed overview and analysis of the observations of the object that have been performed with SINFONI (VLT) and we provide a comprehensive approach to clarify the nature of G2/DSO. We show that the tail emission consists of two isolated and compact sources with different orbital elements for each source rather than an extended and stretched component as it appeared in previous representations of the same data. Considering our recent publications, we propose that the monitored dust-enshrouded objects are remnants of a dissolved young stellar cluster whose formation was initiated in the circumnuclear disk. This indicates a shared history, which agrees with our analysis of the D- and X-sources.

Harmonisasi masyarakat plural: Praktik sosial di sekolah teologi untuk membangun nasionalisme Indonesia yang inklusif

Indonesian Nationalism is historic and ethical, not natural. It was born out of a shared history of various groups in Indonesia in their struggle against the colonials, and of an ethical decision that those groups consciously took to become one nation. Such an inclusive nationalism must be intentionally developed structurally, systemically, and continuously by all the elements of the Indonesian nation, lest it would be wiped out by centralism, primordialism disguising in the form of dominant-religion-based nationalism, and unjust distribution of membership along with all its respected rights. Using the analysis from the perspective of Character Ethics, this article shows that theological schools have an important role in the character formation of inclusive nationalism through social practice in theological schools. Social practice is not simply a series of activities, but a series of intentional actions which are done together repeatedly by the whole members of the community. The history of an institution that was intended to prepare pastor assistants in Yogyakarta until it becomes the Faculty of Theology, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana, at present is presented in this article as a model of effective social practice in the formation of inclusive nationalism. The research focuses on the intersubjective relations between all members of the Duta Wacana community, which reflects the very rich and deeply human experience, that takes place in the local everyday life, including various policies that are born out of that relationship with the religious-cultural identity that becomes its context. AbstrakNasionalisme Indonesia bersifat historis dan etis, bukan alami. Ia lahir dari sejarah bersama kelompok-kelompok bangsa Indonesia melawan penjajah kolonial dan dari keputusan etis yang mereka ambil untuk menjadi satu bangsa Indonesia. Nasionalisme yang inklusif semacam itu harus dengan sengaja ditumbuh-kembangkan secara terstruktur, sistemik, dan berkesinambungan oleh segenap elemen bangsa agar tidak tergerus oleh ancaman sentralisme, primordialisme yang tersamar dalam bentuk nasionalisme berbasis agama dominan, dan ketidak-adilan distribusi keanggotaan beserta semua hak yang mengikutinya. Dengan menggunakan analisis dari perspektif Etika Karakter, tulisan ini menunjukkan bahwa sekolah-sekolah teologi memiliki peran penting untuk membentuk karakter nasionalisme yang inklusif melalui praktik sosial di sekolah-sekolah teologi terkait. Praktik sosial bukanlah sekadar rangkaian kegiatan, melainkan rangkaian tindakan yang dengan sengaja dilakukan secara bersama-sama berulang-kali oleh segenap anggota komunitas. Sejarah lembaga pendidikan asisten pendeta di Yogyakarta hingga menjadi Fakultas Teologi Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana diangkat dalam tulisan ini sebagai sebuah model praktik sosial yang terbukti efektif membentuk nasionalisme yang inklusif. Penelitian difokuskan pada relasi intersubjektif di antara segenap anggota komunitas ini, yang mencerminkan pengalaman insani yang sangat kaya dan mendalam, yang terjadi sehari-harinya dalam konteks lokalitas hidup, termasuk berbagai kebijaksanaan yang lahir dari relasionalitas tersebut serta identitas kultural religius yang menjadi konteksnya.