Popular consent and foreign policy choices: war against the Philippines and covert action in Chile

It is usually assumed that US policy makers need to generate popular consent in order to undertake regime change against another state. This article explores the ways in which contextual factors such as the joint democracy effect, popular values and public moods influenced efforts by elites in the United States to generate popular consent for regime change in the Philippines and Chile. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the United States undertook covert action in Chile due to public recognition of the target state's democratic credentials and a public mood opposed to further military ventures. In contrast, the absence of a strong joint democracy effect, a national mood infused with romantic nationalism qua militarism and social Darwinism facilitated efforts by US elites to generate consent for the invasion and occupation of the Philippines. Subsequently, this article contributes to understandings of the domestic-level factors that influence foreign policy decisions.     

‘The best thing ever’: how children's popular culture matters

This paper reflects upon a popular cultural event which was, briefly, for a particular grouping of children in the UK, ‘the best thing ever’: namely the release of the CD-single Reach, by the British pop group S Club 7. I suggest that this event was illustrative of manifold cultural forms and practices which—being ostensibly banal, fun, faddish, lowbrow and ‘childish’—continue to go largely unheralded by many social/cultural geographers. Against this grain, this paper presents three apprehensions of S Club 7’s significance. First, I restate a particular case made via Anglo-American cultural studies that ‘children's popular culture’, ought to be taken more seriously in contexts salient to social/cultural geographers. Second, I detail how the S Club 7 phenomenon existed, practically and materially, and mattered, in some children's everyday lives. Third, refracting cultural geographers' recent apprehensions of affective, evental aspects of cultural practices, I suggest that the pop cultural phenomenon described herein mattered (to those children, there and then) in ways which elude and exceed canonical scholarly habits of writing/knowing popular cultural phenomena.     

The irreparable and the imprevidible: fathers and failures at Joyce's family circus

This paper reconsiders ideas of the father in Joyce's writing. It does so by examining in detail those ideas as they are elucidated through circus anecdote and imagery. The focus rests decisively on Ulysses (1922), but references to Joyce's earlier writing and to Finnegans Wake (1939) demonstrate the enduring popularity of the circus as image or metaphor for the author. The paper works broadly to contextualise hitherto overlooked circus references within the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular culture – Joyce is here connected to circus clown Johnny Patterson, music hall star Henry Clifton, and artist Jack B. Yeats. Through this history, it appears that Joyce imitates others in placing male authorities within both actual and invented circus rings to question legitimate influence in local domestic and wider social settings. It moves between these two locations to assess disquieting consequences of imagining political authority within this particular performance space in the fraught period of Irish history from 1904 to 1922.     

Liberation from the Weberian Iron Cage: Pierre Manent on Max Weber

Abstract

In this article I contend that conventional social contract theory is self-referentially incoherent. Conventional contractarianism therefore fails to provide an adequate foundation for the authority of the state and for the obligation of citizens to obey. The insistence on consent for legitimate political authority has usually been rendered in contractarian terms. Thus, the fall of conventional social contract theory seemingly entails that we should reject the principle of consent as well. Yet, the necessity of consent for the authority of the state and, concomitantly, for the obligation of citizens to obey seems to be an entailment of human equality. Thus, insofar as human persons are equal, the legitimacy of the state seems to require a foundation logically precluded to it. We are therefore confronted with a theoretical crisis. Even so, I will argue that we need not reject the principle of consent. The self-referential incoherency of conventional contractarianism results from its conventionalism. We can begin the work of salvaging the principle of consent from the demise of conventional social contract theory by erecting it upon the foundation of moral and ontological realism.     

Indigenous free prior informed consent: a case for self determination in World Heritage nomination processes

Free prior informed consent is a critical concept in enacting the rights of Indigenous People according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This paper outlines a case for the inclusion of free prior informed consent in World Heritage nomination processes and examines issues that are problematic when enacting free prior informed consent. Case research was used to analyse current issues in the potential nomination of certain areas of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The authors’ reflexive engagement within this case offers insights into the praxis of developing a World Heritage nomination consent process. The outcomes of this research were: preconditions need to be addressed to avoid self-exclusion by indigenous representative organisations; the nature of consent needs to account for issues of representation and Indigenous ways of decision making; the power of veto needs to have formal recognition in the nomination process; and prioritising self-determination within free prior informed consent ensures the intent of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The paper contributes to the human rights agenda of Indigenous People and conservation management processes by helping address the issues that will be raised during a World Heritage nomination process.     

Penetrating the ‘black‐box’ of ‘remembrance day’ playlist: bereavement and the induction mechanisms of glocalization – a study in cultural sociology

This article examines the musical repertoire broadcast on Israeli state radio stations on Remembrance Day. Commencing with the first Remembrance Day, Israeli radio stations have refrained from broadcasting songs that do not contribute to the glorification of the military mythology or failure to reinforce the consensual perception of national loss. In view of globalization – it might be assumed that Remembrance Day songs would undergo changes in tune with the times. From a musical point of view, new songs that belong to what Regev and Seroussi classify as ‘globalizing Israel’ penetrated into the nationalist arena. But, following Inglehart and Baker, these songs, despite their seemingly secular façade, remain limited hegemonic enclosures organized around the core of founding values. Apparently, this is an example of the process of glocalization of culture. The article seeks answers to the strategies employed to accommodate these new songs to the traditional ideology of the classical Remembrance Day songs and examines whether the mechanisms of legitimacy that enable the inclusion of new voices on Remembrance Day, can be identified. We argue that their choice is not arbitrary and that they illustrate the manner by which voluntary cultural entrepreneurs (musical editors) are co‐opted in the postnational condition.     

NOT QUITE AN UROBOROS: THEORY,POWER, AND POPULAR CULTURE IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN

Katsuya Hirano's The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan offers an Althusser‐inflected analysis of the relationship between power structures and the economy of cultural production, with a focus on late eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Edo. Hirano spells out his cultural assumptions, and then examines the cultures of parody, comic realism, the grotesque, and the changing relationship between the Meiji state and the body. This theoretical tour de force, however, raises many questions regarding its assumptions about the structure of the early modern Japanese polity, elided evidence, and interpretation. As such, it will stimulate ongoing discussion regarding the place of theory, and in particular of neo‐Marxism, in contemporary historiography.     

Masculinity and its metonyms

The author responds to the articles in this issue by demonstrating how a twentieth-century poem might provide us with a fresh perspective on the situated historical understandings of bodies gendered as male provided here. Amichai uses the literary figure of metonymy to show how ‘a man’ has no time for history: he allows a part to speak for the whole, and a specific cultural moment to stand for any time. Historians and literary scholars alike would benefit from attending to our own metonyms, and the historical continuities we assume or assert as we seek to investigate cultural difference.     

Olei Hagardom: Between official and popular memory

This article examines the interaction between official memory and popular memory through the case study of Olei Hagardom – Jewish underground fighters executed by the British in Mandatory Palestine. Studies of collective memory usually maintain that the ruling elite, with its control of state resources, dominates collective memory formation. However, the case of Olei Hargardom demonstrates the potentially limited power of institutional commemoration and exclusion in a democratic society. David Ben-Gurion and his government's attempt to exclude these right-wing heroes from the national pantheon had limited impact. Menachem Begin's persistent, partisan political efforts to include them were only partially successful. Ultimately, Olei Hargardom became entrenched in Israeli collective memory as a result of apolitical literary works, popular culture, and the establishment of a site of memory by spontaneous, grassroots efforts.     

19世纪末20世纪初美国大众化杂志的发展

19世纪末20世纪初,美国大众化杂志迅速兴起和发展。大众化杂志有如下几个特点:迎合大众口味;内容贴近社会现实;价格低廉;有一个稳定增长的、数量较大的读者队伍。美国大众化杂志的兴起和发展,是当时美国社会政治经济状况决定的,并对20世纪初美国黑幕揭发运动的兴起和发展,以及20世纪初美国社会的变革和转型起了重要的促进作用。