Nationalist Backlash Against Foreign Climate Shaming

Should international pro-climate actors speak up against climate rogues, or do foreign critics risk igniting nationalist backlash against global environmental norms and institutions? We explore naming and shaming dynamics in global climate politics by fielding survey experiments to nationally representative samples in Brazil. Our results show that nationalism moderates public reactions to foreign climate shaming: individuals who are highly attached to their nation are more likely to reject international criticism than their lowly attached peers. Yet, we also find that nationalist publics express little support for virulent defiance against foreign critics. Our findings hold irrespective of the source of criticism and the nature of the critical message. These results sound a cautionary note on the belief that liberal internationalists should tread carefully so as not to unadvisedly unleash nationalist pushback. Foreign climate criticism may bump up against nationalist sentiment in climate rogues, but it will not necessarily fuel an all-out backlash against the global environmental regime.

The master’s tools: Media repurposing of exclusionary metaphors to challenge racist constructions of migrants

Metaphors are powerful mechanisms by which to rally exclusionary nationalist sentiment without necessarily appearing racist. However, sometimes those metaphors are challenged, inverting exclusionary functions. In this paper, we track how metaphors in the Australian press over the last 165 years which have generally constructed migration as a threat to the integrity of the nation, are repurposed to counter the claims embedded within them. For example, while invasion, swamping and flooding are generally recruited to negative ends, the same tropes are used to argue that fears of invasion are unjustified, that numbers of migrants are too small to swamp the nation and that the so-called floods of foreigners are overstated. However, this does not necessarily result in a decrease in metaphor use, nor challenge the fundamental implications of the metaphors. We explore how the repurposing occurs, and why it may not be an effective tool for anti-racist action.

Philosophical-political comprehension of Eurasia in the context of the Russian project of civilizational development

This article attempts to “objectify” and conceptualize the concept of “Eurasia”, determine its ontological characteristics as the sociopolitical space of development of the Russian civilizational project, as well as delineates the contours of this space within the framework of a project-constructive methodological orientation. The author refers to the history of formation of holistic representations on Eurasia within the scientific thought, giving special attention to the contribution of geopoliticians, and emphasizing the implementation of theoretical provisions in real politics. The empirical basis relies on the two megaprojects that are implemented in practice: the Silk Road Economic Belt initiated by China and the Eurasian Economic Union (which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia), as well as the “Greater Eurasia” as a potential way of their interlink and development of the space for cross-civilizational dialogue on the continent. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) Eurasia is determined both as the goal of the Russian project of civilizational development and as the space it can be realized within. At the same time, the space for the development of Russia-Eurasia is described as the natural environment of the Russian civilizational project, the space of the “primary circle”. Special role is played by the creation and development of the Eurasian Economic Union, which unites the countries that have faced the escalation of nationalist sentiment after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; 2) The “Greater Eurasia” is designated as the “secondary circle” of the Russian civilizational project, a space for continental cooperation, determines by new political reality.  3) Certain zones of civilizational confrontation and contradictions on the continent have been identified. The author believes that the need for conceptualization of the concept at hand lies in the significant sociopolitical formative potential.

Disparity and Diversion: Domestic Economic Inequality and MID Initiation

Scholarship has demonstrated that domestic economic inequality is related to a number of forms of intrastate conflict, such as civil wars and rebellions. There are good reasons to believe that it also has an impact on the initiation of militarized interstate disputes for diversionary reasons. Such use of external force may refocus popular attention and may reinforce the strong nationalist sentiment that tends to prevail in societies with substantial economic inequality. Our empirical results support this contention in democracies but, as expected, not in autocracies. At a time when domestic economic inequality is rising across the world, our findings may be timely.

Implications of Media

This article takes up a material analysis of a set of eleven nineteenth-century Arabic broadsides entitled Nafir Suriyya, published in Beirut by Syrian intellectual Butrus al-Bustani from 1860-1861. Produced in response to the civil wars of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and Damascus (in the Ottoman Syrian provinces), when intercommunal conflicts occurred between different confessional groups, these publications called for unity and cooperation amongst these communities through the framework of patriotism and one's love of the homeland. These broadsides have thus played an important role in twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship on early nationalist sentiment, particularly a Syro-Lebanese political identity, amongst Arabic-speaking Ottoman denizens. This article takes up a material analysis of Nafir Suriyya, a rare set of eleven printed Arabic broadsides produced between 1860-1861 in Ottoman Beirut, to consider the wider cultural and socio-political implications of this medium in relationship to other print media in circulation within the Ottoman public domain.

Islandsk sprog og dansk tunge

The Icelandic language and medieval literature played an important role in the development of Danish national identity. Icelandic manuscripts served as a key source for the writing of Denmark’s earliest history and attracted widespread interest among Danish scholars. Growing nationalist sentiment was increasingly directed at the mother tongue, which was considered a major cornerstone of national identity. Knowledge of Icelandic could be of key importance for researching the Danish language, and for interpreting the meaning of older writings. Languages that had a long tradition of writing and prestigious literature were highly respected, and it was significant to find an unbroken connection between the contemporary and original language. In this respect, the Icelandic language had characteristics that Danish no longer had. Interest of Danes in Icelandic language and literature, together with the important role they were accorded in the age of Romanticism, meant a great deal to Icelanders. Apart from creating job opportunities and income in Copenhagen, these conditions fuelled their pride as Icelanders and boosted awareness of the significance of language for Icelandic nationality and culture. As a result, interest on the part of Danes in Icelandic language and culture contributed to the growth and development of both Icelandic and Danish.

Malaysia’s Dilemmatic South China Sea Policy under Muhyiddin Yassin

Malaysia’s South China Sea policy under the current Perikatan Nasional government is largely consistent with its previous approach, except for some minor recalibrations. Although Malaysia continues to pursue a “low-profile” approach by de-emphasising the problem and suppressing nationalist sentiment over the issue, it does however, selectively display increased willingness in taking a harder stand when it comes to preserving sovereignty in the disputed waters, especially when there is a spike of nationalist sentiment among Malaysians.

Emerging infrastructures: the politics of radium and the validation of radiotherapy in India’s first tertiary cancer hospital

This article traces the history of India’s first tertiary cancer hospital, Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH). TMH was originally conceived in 1932 as a philanthropic project by the Tatas, an elite Parsi business family in Bombay. The founding of TMH represented a form of philanthro-capitalism which both enabled the Tatas to foster a communal acceptance for big businesses in Bombay and provide the Tatas with the opportunity to place stakes in the emerging nuclear research economy seen as essential to the scientific nationalist sentiment of the post-colonial state. In doing this, the everyday activities of TMH placed a heavy emphasis on nuclear research. In a time when radium for the treatment of cancer was still seen as ‘quackery’ in much of the world, the philanthro-capitalist investment and the interest in nuclear research by the post-colonial state provided an environment where radium medicine was able to be validated. The validation of radiotherapy at TMH influenced how other cancer hospitals in India developed and also provided significant resources for cancer research in early-mid twentieth century India. Ultimately, this article identifies ways in which cancer comes to be seen as relevant in the global south and raises questions on the relationship between local and global actors in setting health priorities.

Militant portraits. The promotion of Hungarian National History through nineteenth‑century graphics. Case study

This work presents a series of group portraits of past Transylvanian leaders and of nineteenth-century politicians, signed by Magyari Lajos and Miklós Barabás, from the heritage of the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca. Throughout the nineteenth century, as nationalist sentiment expanded in Europe, interest in national history and historical figures was extremely high and people genuinely revered historical figures. The cult of these personalities was intensively cultivated, in all environments. There was major popular enthusiasm, in an atmosphere animated by the patriotic spirit. This subject was frequently approached in the periodicals of the nineteenth century, which published not only historical prose and biographies, but also images, which ensured a greater impact of these publications on the public. The Hungarian society of the era developed a genuine educational program based on the heroic past and on portraits of personalities.