Nazi Leaders,Members, and Voters

ALBERT HOURANI. The Emergence of the Modern Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Pp. 263. $30 (US); ELIE KEDOURIE, Islam in the Modern World and Other Studies. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. Pp. 332. $17.95 (US).     

Leaders,dreams and journeys: Italy's new political communication

This article argues that the modernization of Italian political campaigns and their relationship with the media have led parties and candidates to reconceptualize both their symbols and their rhetorical visions. In contrast to the past, Italian political communication now appears clearly 'Americanized' and candidate-centred. Candidates evoke symbolic visions stressing leadership and personal characteristics instead of referring to the ideological and party symbols that dominated the old campaigns. As in the USA, dreams and journeys are now used in Italy as political images, and communication focuses on the construction of leadership. The author argues, however, that despite these similarities, the Italian personalization of politics differs in many respects from that found in the USA, above all in the lack of institutionalization of political symbols in Italy.     

Prime Ministers,Opposition Leaders and Government Popularity in Australia

There is little doubt that political leaders are more important, and more visible, than at any time since democratisation. This article uses monthly public opinion poll data collected since 1973 to test four hypotheses concerning the relationships between leader approval, economic and political performance, and government support. The findings show that Prime Ministerial approval is based on public perceptions of both political and economic performance, with minis terial resignations, by-election defeats and the party complexion of State governments forming the major components of political performance, and unemployment and GDP being the major contributors to economic performance. There is support for the hypothesis that Prime Ministers mediate the effects of political performance on government popularity, but no support for the hypothesis that economic performance has a direct impact on government popularity. Overall, the results emphasise the extent to which the leader has absorbed the functions once exercised by the party, a pattern now common across the other advanced democracies.     

Emergence of fusion/fission cycling and self-organized criticality from a simulation model of early complex polities

A spatial-temporal model of early complex polities is described in which cycles of consolidation and collapse emerged during simulations. Self-organized criticality (SOC) also was clearly observed. SOC is characteristic of simulations for iterative physical phenomena such as earthquakes and forest fires. Social scientists are interested in SOC as a theoretical framework to understand cyclical human cultural processes. In particular there has been considerable speculation that SOC underlies polity cycling. The current model is an attempt to move beyond speculation by demonstrating that: 1) the model unequivocally exhibits SOC, 2) there is a self-evident correspondence between the model’s structure and actual polities as indicated in the archaeological record, 3) hierarchical settlement patterns emerge during simulations, and 4) simulated population distributions are consistent with empirical rank-size survey data typical of early complex polities.     

Sedimentary logics and the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh

This paper adopts a geosocial approach to sociopolitical research by thinking with sediment as a forceful mode of terraqueous mobility driven by interactions between dynamic earth systems inflected by social processes. It demonstrates that sediment is an active and vital state of matter, with the potential to erupt into and disrupt human politics. Unpacking sediment as a form of movement challenges assumptions of the earth as a stable platform on which socio-political processes play out. The paper develops its argument through analyses of the Rohingya refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh and a char (sediment) island in the Meghna Estuary to which Bangladesh proposes to relocate the refugees. In the first situation, the sedimentary logics of anticline geology, deforestation and monsoon rains push back against political agendas directed towards constraining refugee movement. In the second, fluvial and oceanic sedimentary dynamics and the post-Holocene volatility of the monsoon throw into doubt the engineering solution proposed by Bangladesh to the political problems the refugee presence poses. Through these examples, the paper adds to literature on how states of matter inflect, exceed, undercut or in other ways interfere with matters of state through their unique, dynamic environmental properties.     

The coloniality of disaster: Race,empire, and the temporal logics of emergency in Puerto Rico,USA

This essay uses the case of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to discuss “the coloniality of disaster”: how catastrophic events like hurricanes, earthquakes, but also other forms political and economic crisis deepen the fault lines of long-existing racial and colonial histories. It argues that disaster capitalism needs to be understood as a form of racio-colonial capitalism and that this in turn requires us to question our understandings of both “resilience” and “recovery.” The article focuses on the “wait of disaster” as a temporal logic of state subjugation and on how Puerto Ricans responded to state abandonment through modes of autogestión, or autonomous organizing. It concludes that while resiliency can be coopted in service of a neoliberal recovery, it can also be the site for gestating new forms of sovereignty and new visions of postcolonial recovery.     

Caring practices: the connection between logics of state and domestic violence in Cairo,Egypt

This article analyzes the multiscalar relationship between state violence and domestic violence among low-income residents of Cairo, Egypt. To do so, I look at the concept of care and how notions of care are intimately linked with interpretations of violence within daily life. In the accounts of research participants, acts of violence are instances that are understood as lacking regard for the other’s well-being. Violence is juxtaposed against ‘discipline’ and is generally understood as an act of care meant to correct inappropriate behavior. Here, discipline can encompass acts of physical force. Finally, findings show that for low-income Egyptians, the violence of the state not only shapes but also happens simultaneously to violence in the home.     

West Papua,Indonesia and the Melanesian Spearhead Group: competing logics in regional and international politics

The idea of a shared Melanesian identity has been consolidated over the last three decades or so through the most important subregional organisation in the South-West Pacific—the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The solidarity of this group has been strained over various issues from time to time, but none is as fraught as the Indonesian occupation of what is commonly known as West Papua, whose indigenous Papuan people are ethnically Melanesian. In addition to recounting the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in the context of the dynamics of decolonisation, the Cold War and early regional development, the article examines the emergence of Melanesian identity and the MSG, before considering more recent developments. These focus on a recent bid by West Papuans for MSG membership, key aspects of Indonesia's role in the Melanesian subregion, and the extent to which these developments highlight competing logics in regional and international politics.     

Ornamentalism,Empire and Race: Indigenous Leaders and Honours in Australia and New Zealand

The imperial honours system, David Cannadine has argued, was a means for binding together ‘the British proconsular elite’ and ‘indigenous colonial elites’ throughout the settler colonies and dominions of the British Empire (Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Penguin, 2002). Yet in settler colonies like Australia and New Zealand indigenous populations were marginalised and often disregarded, and it was local white elites who became knights of St Michael and St George, the Bath and the British Empire. Focusing on Australia and New Zealand, this article explores the complex relationships Aboriginal and Māori leaders have had with honours during the twentieth century. Building upon Cannadine's analysis, I examine the ways in which indigenous leaders navigated the political complexities involved in the offer of an honour, and how their acceptance of awards was received by others, shedding light on how honours systems intersected with post-war struggles for indigenous rights in the former dominions.     

领袖人物与企业文化的形成--稻盛与京瓷

企业价值观是企业文化的核心。在企业价值观形成的过程中,企业领袖起着重要作用。本文以稻盛和夫为对象,通过分析其在京瓷企业价值观建立与实践的过程中所起到的作用,探究企业的领袖人物与企业文化之间的关联。     

The Caliphate,and the Changing Strategy of the Public Statements of al-Qaeda's Leaders

Abstract

According to the American President George Bush's administration, the establishment of a global Caliphate is a key al-Qaeda goal. This article focuses primarily on the statements of Ayman az-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, with their public words traced throughout the last three decades, from Egypt to Afghanistan, to Sudan, back to Afghanistan and through the various conflicts that have happened since they have been on the run post 9/11. By highlighting the changing strategy of their discourse according to the events around them and internationally, it is shown that far from being a critical part of al-Qaeda ideology as some would have the public believe, the Caliphate plays a minor role in their objectives and rhetoric, used primarily as a motivational and instrumental tool in uniting the ummah in its efforts to expel foreign forces from what it considers to be occupied lands.     

Public Leaders in Regional Economic Development

This paper focuses on the role of public leaders in regional economic development from a community-building point of view. According to the basic hypothesis, the role of leaders rises everywhere during periods of instability, but remains always relevant in economic peripheries. Inspired by the chaos theory, we argue that leaders have decisive roles during unstable periods or chaos in a society when a very small fluctuation may qualitatively change the direction of development. Our second point here is that leaders will always be in key positions on economic peripheries where a general lack of human resources and a thin institutional thickness exist. The theoretical discussion refers to Weber's Schmalenbach's 'emotional community'/'Bund' concepts and Gumilev's theory of ethnogenesis and tries to plant these approaches within the present day framework. The empirical case study describes a perfect leadership and a successful community-building process in Emmaste Community, Estonia.