The Right that failed ? The ambiguities of conservative thought and the dilemmas of conservative practice in international affairs

This article seeks to assess the dilemmas and ambiguities of contemporary Anglo-American conservative thought and practice in international affairs. It bases its discussion in an understanding of conservative thought as a philosophy of imperfection but points out that there is a dominant way in which this has been understood in the last two hundred years but a rather different sensibility as well. It then argues that the dominant sensibility has become mired in crisis in the latter part of the twentieth century and as a result movements have arisen, allegedly within conservative thought, but in fact largely alien to it, and which now dominate the scene, especially in the United States. It seeks to trace the differences between the US and UK in this respect and offers an interpretation of the relative paucity of conservative thought-and oscillations and ambiguity of conservative practice-in the UK in the 1990s. Finally, the article offers some thoughts, drawn from that secondary sensibility in political conservatism, about what might be done.     

Changing trends in international marriages between Korean men and Southeast Asian women, 1993–2013

Korea witnessed a large increase in the fraction of men marrying spouses from Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, about one per cent of Korean men’s new marriages were to Southeast Asian women but by 2005, this increased to over nine per cent with even higher rates in rural areas. With the use of a logit model and Marriage Register data from 1993–2013, the determinants of international marriages are explored using a more rigorous approach and over a longer period of observation compared to previous studies. Older Korean men with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to marry a woman from Southeast Asia (compared to a fellow Korean). The predictors of international marriage differed depending on the wife’s birth country: if the wife had some college education there was a higher probability of marriage to a Filipino woman, but less likely to a woman from China or Vietnam, compared to marriage to a Korean woman. Finally, over the past two decades the education level, age at marriage, and country of origin of the foreign wives have changed substantially. The data shows fewer women migrating from China (of which about 70% are ethnically Korean), and a rising number from Vietnam. This ‘marriage migration’ has implications for the demographics, ethnicity, and occupational composition of those living in Korea.     

Intersectional power dynamics and extended households: Elderly and widowed women’s international migration from Armenia

Drawing upon interviews and fieldwork conducted in Armenia and Turkey with 25 Armenian migrant women and their non-accompanying family members, the present article examines how gendered norms intersecting with age, marital and motherhood statuses have structured the migration decision-making process as it occurs at the household level. These migrant women were mostly elderly, widowed and from extended households, where male income support to the family was either insufficient or wholly absent for a variety of reasons. Building on the Household Survival Strategies (HSS) approach, this article examines the dynamism and complex kinship norms in extended-households and how these have led some women to assume the role of migrant labourers in a patriarchal context that would ordinarily deny them mobility. While empirically this study sheds light on women’s migration from an understudied geography, it also deepens our understanding of the interplay between patriarchy, intersectionality and women’s agency outside of the traditional nuclear household.     

Europe of love: re‐centring intercultural affairs

The present collection of essays is the first collective result of the research project ‘Europe: Emotions, Identities, Politics’ that is being conducted at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI), Essen.1 The original inspiration for this type of research came to me at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, where I spent the year 1992–93; I continued the research at the European University Institute, Florence, in the years 1994–2002. The first product of this research was my book Europe in Love, Love in Europe (London: Tauris, 1999 and New York: New York University Press, 2000) that takes 1930s Britain as a case study, by situating it within a European context of longue durée. The present project has been funded by the Kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschungspreis des Landes Nordrhein‐Westfalen from 2002 to 2004. Within its general framework, the members of the research group, directed by Luisa Passerini, have developed their own individual projects; they are Liliana Ellena, Alexander Geppert, Jo Labanyi, Ruth Mas, Almira Ousmanova, and Alison Sinclair. Guests of the project have been invited for periods of time up to a month; numerous seminars, workshops and conferences have been organised, with the participation of junior and senior scholars from various countries. The majority of the papers presented on these occasions will be published at the end of the project. View all notes The approach of our research is that of a cultural history of Europe, and the focus is on the historical connection between the idea of Europe and a certain type of personal emotion. The project aims to explore the relationships between political forms of identity and cultural attitudes in the field of emotions in Europe. More specifically, it is engaged in understanding the relationship between the formation of identity in the European context, on the one hand, and the idea of courtly and romantic love, on the other. I have argued elsewhere that European cultural identity must be distinguished from the political version based on the sense of belonging to the European Union. In the course of this introductory essay I always refer to a cultural Europe.2 Cf. Luisa Passerini, ‘From the Ironies of Identity to the Identities of Irony’, in A. Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. The original inspiration for this type of research came to me at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, where I spent the year 1992–93; I continued the research at the European University Institute, Florence, in the years 1994–2002. The first product of this research was my book Europe in Love, Love in Europe (London: Tauris, 1999 and New York: New York University Press, 2000) that takes 1930s Britain as a case study, by situating it within a European context of longue durée. The present project has been funded by the Kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschungspreis des Landes Nordrhein‐Westfalen from 2002 to 2004. Within its general framework, the members of the research group, directed by Luisa Passerini, have developed their own individual projects; they are Liliana Ellena, Alexander Geppert, Jo Labanyi, Ruth Mas, Almira Ousmanova, and Alison Sinclair. Guests of the project have been invited for periods of time up to a month; numerous seminars, workshops and conferences have been organised, with the participation of junior and senior scholars from various countries. The majority of the papers presented on these occasions will be published at the end of the project. View all notes This introduction is divided into a presentation of the project, the specific itinerary that we propose in this special issue, and some considerations on its thematic.     

Connecting lectures to current affairs: the “letters to newspapers” assignment

This paper presents the experiences of teaching political geography, in a level 2 BA course, with the use of an innovative assignment – the letters to newspapers assignment. We provide here the aims, rationale and a detailed outline of the assignment. We also discuss student feedback from 67 questionnaires and 2 focus groups. Our findings suggest that the assignment was instrumental in (a) enabling the students to see concepts in action, that is to link abstract ideas with real-world issues and (b) initiating a move away from passive learning towards supporting students to actively and critically reflect upon their relationship with the world.     

Race,space, and agency in the international introduction industry: how American men perceive women’s agency in Colombia,Ukraine and the Philippines

The international introduction industry, more commonly known as the ‘mail order bride’ industry, is often portrayed in American media as a conduit of human trafficking or a ploy by women from ‘third world’ countries to gain access to American citizenship. This study addresses how men participating in the international introduction industry perceived the industry and the agency/sincerity of women who participate in it across three different geographic spaces, namely Ukraine, Colombia and the Philippines, and how these perceptions often adopt racialized discourses that portrays white Ukrainian women as sexy ‘scammers’, while women of color are more likely to be portrayed as victims of poverty and patriarchy. Based on empirical data collected on romance tours within all geographic spaces with male participants, I suggest that men’s racialized assumptions regarding women’s intentions within the industry, as well as what type of agency they possess, are heavily based on tropes of the third world as backwards, traditional, and static.     

Why is there too much international theory?

Claire Turenne Sjolander and Wayne S. Cox (eds), Beyond Positivism. Critical Reflections On International Relations (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.201 $US35.00 ISBN 1 55587 483 5.

Ronan P. Palan and Barry Gills (eds), Transcending the State‐Global Divide. A Neostructuralist Agenda In International Relations (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.283 $US40.00 ISBN 1 55587 395 2.     

Lands of women? Writing the history of early medieval women in Ireland and Europe

Lisa M. Bitel Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland. Edited by Christine Meek and Katharine Simms ‘The Fragility of Her Sex’? Medieval Irish Women in their European Context.     

Intersectional solidarity? The Armagh women,the British left and women’s liberation

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.     

British policy in the Cretan Question (1893–1913): prioritizing between diplomatic and economic affairs

This article investigates British policy fluctuations regarding the Cretan Question from 1893 to 1913 by examining Great Britain’s participation in the European Concert, as well as its plans to achieve an economic foothold in Crete. Running parallel, these two factors expose the critical factors determining British policy through an analysis of the development of British international relations in the Levant and the fulfilment of the City’s investment plans in Crete. Moreover, the examination of British policy regarding the Cretan issue helps explain why and to what degree London shifted from a soft to a hard-line exercise of power towards the key aspects of the Cretan problem. The article closes by suggesting that Britain’s main priority was to avoid diplomatic isolation over the Eastern Question, while maintaining closer relations with Russia, and re-entering the arena of the Eastern Question.     

Who is in control of the international monetary system?

Although the financial and economic crisis did not directly hit the international monetary system, it has lead to the rethinking of the overall architecture that underpins the world economy. Can the current system of floating currency blocs with dollar‐based trade and reserves withstand the strains of the global adjustment ahead? It is time to consider alternatives. This article argues that the existing system needs to evolve into a multicurrency one in which a number of international currencies, ideally representing the main trading areas, have the function of storing value and providing the unit of measure. A multicurrency system would respond more flexibly to the demand for liquidity and would provide a way to diversify the accumulation of reserve assets. It is also more appropriate for the increasingly multipolar world economy. The article discusses how in today's larger and more integrated world economy the dependence on the dollar as the basis of both trade flows and financial reserves has become excessive, creating some fundamental imbalances. However, while the rationale for change is clear, the current system is locked in a form of stable disequilibrium where the status quo carries the lowest risk for most players in the short‐term. Any abrupt move away from the dollar could trigger trade flow disruption and exchange value losses. Policy cooperation should keep the imbalances under control and manage the transition to a more stable system. The system will evolve, albeit gradually. Looking at the steps taken by some countries, notably China, there is the gathering impression that this decade is one of transition, rather than a ‘Bretton Woods moment’. Any reshaping will have to bring in the views of the ‘rising powers’, China in particular, and their concerns about the limitations of the existing system and the increasingly asymmetric burden of adjustment that it imposes.     

A new Gaullist moment? European bandwagoning and international polarity

The transatlantic partnership needs to be reassessed. Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has chosen to bandwagon with the United States and to outsource its security to Washington. Bandwagoning has serious consequences when the use of force is at stake: it may lead to entrapment, where weaker allies may be involuntarily dragged into a conflict. It may also lead to abandonment, where the dominant ally may choose to discard their vital security concerns. With the evolution of the international system towards a multipolar configuration, this strategy of bandwagoning is becoming increasingly costly for Europe while the dominant power, the United States, is progressively confronted by other competitors at the systemic level. These classic dilemmas attached to an asymmetric partnership are exacerbated in a multipolar configuration. In particular, the abandonment scenario may become more and more frequent precisely because there is competition—and thus potential costs—at the international level: the United States may leave Europe alone, not by choice but by necessity. The current crisis in Ukraine illustrates this shift: while some American leaders were keen to escalate the conflict by arming Ukraine, the Obama administration's commitment to the defence of Europe has been minimal and it has largely delegated the management of the crisis to the Europeans themselves. Washington had other and more important priorities. Strategic autonomy is not an option for Europe; it has become a reality, a Gaullist moment where Europeans will have to learn to think and act strategically for themselves.