Life Narratives of the Past: Herta Müller on Communist Romania

Narratives of the past are created and, in some cases, recreated, through literary works by revealing fragments from past traumas, reinterpreting past events, or focusing on historical events held in the collective memory. In a text dedicated to excavation and memory, Walter Benjamin notes that when approaching one’s personal past, one must proceed like a person digging in the ground, and not be afraid of returning repeatedly to the same matter. This essay argues that Herta Müller uses this method to address the personal and collective Romanian past, creating through her novels a literary remembrance of the past that deeply resonates with the memories of those affected by totalitarian regimes. Never presenting a linear or whole narrative of the past but rather the pieces of a life-narrative puzzle, Müller’s literary world becomes a medium through which the victims of totalitarian regimes can regain control over the narratives of their past.     

Health centre visits among the elderly with chronic ailments: Evidence from the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System, 2004, Thailand

This study deployed statistical and spatial (GIS) analyses to test the effects of geographic, demographic and occupational factors in predicting health centre visits among the elderly (≥60 years) with chronic ailments in Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand. Datasets from the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System (2004 baseline survey and a 2006 project follow-up) comprised five land-use landscape and occupational strata: urban/semi-urban (industrial), rice field, plantation crop, upland and mixed economy. Travel distance to the nearest health centre was calculated following transportation routes and the GPS coordinates of individual home locations, and the number of healthcare visits under the national free universal coverage (UC) scheme reported for the previous year was used as a dependent variable in regressions. Broadly, the study found that distance was not a significant predictor of the rate of elderly health centres visits for those with co-residing spouses and/or adult children (77% of sample), and for the elderly still working (48% of the sample) who were the least likely to access healthcare. Owning motorised vehicles did not encourage visits, which also varied by land-use and occupational strata.     

中国共产党党员权利研究的回顾与展望

中国共产党党员权利研究是事关党员主体地位和党内民主进程的一项重大课题。近年来,就党员权利与党员义务的关系以及党员的知情权、批评权、监督权及其保障等问题,理论界和广大学者都给予极大关注和研究,并取得了一定的积极成果。认真梳理和分析此项研究的概况及相关问题,有助于我们深化和拓展关于党员权利的创新性和系统性研究。     

What the drone saw: the cultural optics of the unmanned war

The dramatic growth of drone warfare in the last decade has meant the arrival of a new kind of war imagery in civilian life: the view through the drone camera. As such, the drone is not simply a weapon, but also an emerging medium for representing conflict. This article explores the ways this imagery has been selected, interpreted, framed and put to use in public and popular culture. In addition to exploring how these practices of looking fit within the larger history of war imagery, two prominent features of ‘drone vision’ are identified: the promotion of consumer interactivity in the drone war and the militarising of domestic space.     

加强和改进舆论监督为构建和谐社会服务

新时期,新闻媒体如何加强和改进舆论监督工作,为构建社会主义和谐社会服务,这是新闻业人必须深入思考和正确把握的重要问题。本文从充分认识加强舆论监督工作的重要性、正确把握舆论监督的指导原则、讲究舆论监督工作艺术、提高舆论监督效果、实行正确的舆论监督等四个方面进行了论述。     

Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.     

Sousveilling the ‘Global War on Terror’

This article theorises what it means to challenge official regimes of surveillance in the War on Terror by further developing the notion of ‘sousveillance’. In particular, we focus on the performative dimension of surveillance by attending to its sites of struggle, particularly where alternative and counter-performances work to disrupt and dislodge official regimes of vision. These potent counter-performances have become important flashpoints for discussion in the ongoing negotiation of security state power since the onset of the War on Terror. The article begins by considering what it means to call surveillance ‘performative’ and how such official performances have had a documented chilling effect on free expression and democratic deliberation. It continues by exploring Steve Mann’s notion of ‘sousveillance’, or the view from below, as a theoretical resource for understanding counter-visual performances that otherwise challenge authoritarian surveillant practices. Finally, the article illustrates these dynamics through a number of sousveillant performances that have provoked new deliberative spaces in the context of the War on Terror.     

Biopolitical Violence and Waiting: Hotspot as a Biopolitical Borderzone

This paper conceptualises Lesvos hotspot as a biopolitical borderzone where migrants experience concentrated violent practices of borders, including legal exclusion, presence of exclusionary surveillance and absence of surveillance for safety, degrading living conditions, and waiting. The paper also discusses the biopolitical consequences of these practices for migrants such as physical illnesses and injuries, and psychological disorders. The paper contributes to the scholarship on biopolitical borders in two main ways. First, through conceptualising hotspot as a form of biopolitical borderzone and demonstrating the specific biopolitical practices in the Lesvos hotspot and their effects on migrants. Second, through highlighting the key role of waiting in the operations of the biopolitical border. The paper demonstrates how waiting is entangled in a complex way with other biopolitical practices and how it both creates and amplifies biopolitical effects for migrants.     

Peeing under surveillance: bathrooms,gender policing,and hate violence

The experiences of trans and gender non-conforming people in public restrooms confirms what feminist scholars have been saying for decades: public space is not a neutral space, rather it is where power is enacted. In this intervention, I extend Foucault’s analysis of docile bodies to gender, suggesting that sex-segregated bathrooms are technologies of disciplinary power, upholding the gender binary by forcing people to choose between men’s and women’s rooms. The resulting lack of safe access to public restrooms is an everyday reality for those who fall outside of gender binary norms. Faced with a built environment that denies their existence and facilitates gender policing, I argue that trans and gender non-conforming people sometimes engage in situational docility. Bodies are adjusted to comply with the cardinal rule of gender – to be readable at a glance – which is often due to safety concerns. Changing the structure of bathrooms to be gender inclusive and/or neutral may decrease gender policing in bathrooms and the need for this situational docility, allowing trans and gender non-conforming people to pee in peace.