Second half part of the apple

This article investigates the use of friendship metaphors in texts by adult second language writers, in relation to the occurrence and function of metaphor and the writers’ discursive constructions of identity. The texts come from the final assessment in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), a language program in basic Swedish. The analysis confirmed the initial assumption that the emotional and existentially loaded theme of friendship allows for the use of metaphor. The results also showed that the experience of writers as newcomers in Sweden played out in the metaphors that were used and their contexts. In order to categorize the found metaphors, a model was developed to show how systematic metaphors reflect functions and values related to three thematic categories: guidance and help, belonging and inclusion, and sharing and solidarity. For several metaphors, the metaphoricity was created through novel and unidiomatic wording, i.e. a kind of neologism that can be considered a communication strategy. The importance of using universal and abstract themes in language testing is emphasized, to enable second language writers to express different facets of experience and knowledge through existential thoughts and attitudes – not only as language learners and newcomers, but also as social agents who create and keep transnational relations through friends.

Praktik Paradiplomasi dalam Implementasi Kerjasama Smart City Pemerintah Kota Bandung dan Kota Seoul

Paradiplomacy was popular in the early 1980s, when the Quebec City government strengthened cooperation with regional governments of other countries and other state actors in international relations. This phenomenon was studied in depth by diplomacy experts, namely Duchacek and Soldatos, which was later implemented in practice in transnational relations between countries in the world. The same thing was done by the city government of Bandung. The Bandung City Government undergoes the stages of smart collaboration formulation. An important process in paradiplomacy is the occurrence of communication contained in the policy advocacy process of the Seoul City government through the Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP) under the Ministry of Economy and Finance of South Korea. This study aims to see the Bandung City government as a subnational government entity conducting diplomacy outside the context of traditional diplomacy, namely paradiplomacy in implementing Smart City cooperation with the City of Seoul in 2016-2019. This research was conducted using a qualitative approach with literature study methods. The literature study method is useful for gathering secondary information needed to support findings in research. This study produces a map of cooperation between the City of Seoul and the City of Bandung which has not been discussed in a similar study using a paradiplomation framework that combines the concepts of Duchacek, Soldatos and Keohane. The cooperation map referred to is an in-depth explanation of the smart city of Bandung which includes Smart Branding, Smart Living, Smart Environment and Smart Government.

The place of transversal LGBTQ+ urban activisms

This special issue on placing LGBTQ+ urban activisms seeks to affirm the plurality of LGBTQ+ activisms and expand the geographic lens to consider places that have been side-lined as sites of LGBTQ+ political ferment. In this article I reflect on the ways that the collection also gestures towards the importance of ‘connective’ LGBTQ+ urban activisms, complicating existing theorisation that has primarily focused on transnational relations. Approaching it through the particular space and time of London during the Covid-19 pandemic, I interpret the collection as a call to explore the knowledge that becomes available – and the praxis that is foregrounded – when we examine the connective dimensions of LGBTQ+ urban activisms. Bridging feminist, queer and urban studies, I conclude by arguing for the particular analytic lens that emerges when ‘place’ is brought into critical tension with ‘transversal politics’ as a way to think about both those connective LGBTQ+ urban activisms that already exist and those which are urgently needed.

A Collaborative Ethnography of Transnational Capitalism

This chapter explains how China has become the most promising market for Italian fashion brands, which led to the development of a variety of forms of collaboration between Italian and Chinese firms and entrepreneurs. It discusses the collaborative ethnography of the transnational capitalism that was forged by the Italians and Chinese engaged in textile and garment production and distribution in China. It also talks about the co-authored monograph, Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian–Chinese Global Fashion. The chapter explains how the Chinese and Italians engaged in transnational relations of production that reformulate their ideas and practices of capitalist enterprise, including investment and management strategies, labor, value, and inequality.

Sustaining the European Bioeconomy: The Material Base and Extractive Relations of a Bio-Based EU-Economy

This chapter explores the implications of a growing need for biomass inputs for the transnational relations of the European bioeconomy. In order to do so, transnational material flows into the European bioeconomy are analysed from a world systems perspective. This puts the European bioeconomy in relation to extractive economies mainly in the (semi-)peripheries of the capitalist world system. Most of the biomass consumed in the EU today is produced domestically, but imports represent 16% of total supply. Material flows in the form of commodity imports to the EU are analysed as extractive relations between the EU and its biomass suppliers. As the potential for increased domestic production in the EU is small, biomass imports are expected to become even more important in the context of a growing bioeconomy. The extractive relations constituted by existing material flows call into question the social and ecological sustainability of bioeconomy transition.

TRANSNATIONAL CONNECTIONS AND IDENTITIES OF AZERBAIJANIS WITH A MIGRATORY BACKGROUND IN RUSSIA

The article examines transnational relations and the structure of identities of persons with a migratory background from Azerbaijan to Russia. The research was carried out using the semi-formalized interview method. The target was ethnic Azerbaijanis who moved from the Azerbaijan SSR before 1991. Particular attention is paid to the presence of relatives in the country of origin and building contacts with them, involvement in the social fields of the historical homeland over a long period of life in another country, as well as, in connection with integration in a new society, the formation of the structure of ethnic, local, national identity of Azerbaijanis with migration background. Also considered are various forms of distancing Azerbaijanis from «their own» (including migrants of later waves) and reverse distancing to them from the side of compatriots living in their homeland. The orientation of informants to live in Azerbaijan at different periods of life has been studied.