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Cultural Policy as Negotiation of Power: The Chinese State’s Role and Strategies in Its Tug-of-War with Global Hollywood

Wendy Su

in China's Encounter with Global Hollywood: "Cultural Policy and the Film Industry, 1994-2013"

This chapter details China’s evolving cultural policy toward Hollywood-represented transnational capital within the larger context of the state’s pursuit of a “socialist market economy,” its bid to ... More

This chapter details China’s evolving cultural policy toward Hollywood-represented transnational capital within the larger context of the state’s pursuit of a “socialist market economy,” its bid to join the World Trade Organization, and its film sector’s marketization and industrialization process. The author argues that China’s Hollywood policy has changed from containment to “competitive cooperation.” Hollywood is used as a convenient tool to achieve the state’s goal of transforming its cultural industries, including the film industry, to advance China’s soft power. The state retains control of the film sector through policy protection, quotas, and shareholding control. Concerned about strengthening the national culture and national identity and maintaining its legitimacy, the Chinese state is a key player in global communications and reinforces its authoritarian power by incorporating both market forces and global capital into the state mechanism.Less

The New International Environment: Changing the Unchanged

A. Damodaran

in Encircling the Seamless: India, Climate Change, and the Global Commons

This chapter analyses the changing world environment due to globalization. It discusses the impact of globalization on the notion of the Westphalian state. It argues that both terrorism and global ... More

This chapter analyses the changing world environment due to globalization. It discusses the impact of globalization on the notion of the Westphalian state. It argues that both terrorism and global capital are inherently biased against the Westphalian order, although one is opposed to the other. It also assesses the role of epistemic communities in promoting local identities, as well as the emergence of global environmental problems of climate change, biodiversity, and desertification. While climate change has implications for a global public good that transcends nation-state boundaries, the Conventions of Biodiversity and Hazardous Wastes Movements deal with global public goods that are confined within the boundaries of the nation-state. This chapter argues that plurality and diversity are key to world order and that local communities have a role to play by generating local responses to globalization and highlighting their identities.Less

Consuming Damascus: Public Culture and the Construction of Social Identity

Walter Armbrust (ed.)

in Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond

This chapter studies a Middle Eastern state that tries to construct the “local” as a national community which is slightly outside the reach of global capital. It shows that Baathist Syria has had ... More

This chapter studies a Middle Eastern state that tries to construct the “local” as a national community which is slightly outside the reach of global capital. It shows that Baathist Syria has had mixed results in its efforts to preserve a distinctively Syrian identity, despite the fact that Syria has been more hesitant than Egypt to lead the entry of global capital. The chapter also discusses the concept of “mere consumption,” which takes the place of modernist engines for constructing national identity.Less

Sudden Stops and IMF-Supported Programs

Barry Eichengreen, Poonam Gupta, and Ashoka Mody

in Financial Markets Volatility and Performance in Emerging Markets

This chapter suggests that International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported programs and IMF credits reduce the likelihood of sudden stops. There is some evidence that this stabilizing effect is stronger ... More

This chapter suggests that International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported programs and IMF credits reduce the likelihood of sudden stops. There is some evidence that this stabilizing effect is stronger for countries with strong fundamentals. This can be interpreted in terms of the literature on global capital account shocks and the stabilizing effect of liquidity insurance. Emergency financial assistance can then reassure individual investors of the country's continued ability to finance its international transactions and reduce their incentive to liquidate their positions. Emergency lending by the IMF can ensure the continued provision of private finance in much the way that lender-of-last-resort intervention by a central bank can limit the scope for bank runs. However, if country fundamentals are weak, IMF financial assistance may only come in the front door and go out the back door, with no impact on the incidence of the sudden stop.Less

World in One City: Travel, Globalization and Placeless Space

in Film, Mobility and Urban Space: A Cinematic Geography of Liverpool

This chapter explores the contradictions raised by the notion of Liverpool as a ‘world in one city’. It provides a comparative analysis of Alex Cox's films Three Businessmen and Liverpool: The World ... More

This chapter explores the contradictions raised by the notion of Liverpool as a ‘world in one city’. It provides a comparative analysis of Alex Cox's films Three Businessmen and Liverpool: The World in One City, suggesting that these films highlight the heterotopic nature of the city as a space of deterritorialization, consumption and global capital. The chapter also considers the ways in which cinematic geographies can both reinforce and expose the city as a placeless space of global mobility.Less

The Broken Windows of Rosa Ramos: Neoliberal Policing Regimes of Imminent Violability

Christina Heatherton

in Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and Change

This chapter considers how “broken windows” policing as both philosophy and practice emerged alongside and also facilitated major transformations of the neoliberal political economy. It further ... More

This chapter considers how “broken windows” policing as both philosophy and practice emerged alongside and also facilitated major transformations of the neoliberal political economy. It further proposes the concept of imminent violability as an analytic through which this vulnerability might be comprehended within the racial, spatial, and ultimately gendered dimensions of neoliberal securitization. By thinking within and across scales, from the regulation of bodies and behavior to the refashioning of spaces for global capital, it argues that imminent violability can serve as a radical feminist critique linking racism, capital accumulation, and the increasingly commonplace vulnerability to state violence most keenly experienced by poor and working-class communities of color across the United States.Less

Learning to Add Value at the Studio

Lilly Irani

in Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India

This chapter details how designers at the studio organized their lives, their relationships, and their self-understandings as they continually relearned how to “add value” in the context of shifting ... More

This chapter details how designers at the studio organized their lives, their relationships, and their self-understandings as they continually relearned how to “add value” in the context of shifting global divisions of labor and speculative hype. Good entrepreneurial citizens did not only find value for themselves and for their clients; they added value to the nation. They channeled their developmental desires and hopes into forms—programming, design, intellectual property, new business creation—that ascended to the highest rungs of a global capital's hierarchies of value. Those who added value to the nation, to the design studio, and to client projects were those to cultivate and include. Those who failed to add value were understood instead as jobless masses and as failed potential. These middle-class ideologies suffused news, policy, client expectations, and everyday talk. As ideologies and as everyday pressures, they shaped the everyday practices of organizing and valuing work and workers in the studio.Less

The Golden Era of Instructed Minorities

Roderick A. Ferguson

in The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference

This chapter analyzes how the emergence of cultural studies in the academe was regulated as power responded to the interventions of anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist movements. It looks at how ... More

This chapter analyzes how the emergence of cultural studies in the academe was regulated as power responded to the interventions of anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist movements. It looks at how the American academy and global capital adopted and renovated the regulations of representative democracy, how those institutions disciplined the critical formations and subjects that the race and gender movements inspired, and how capital and academy attempted to close the social universes that those movements worked to open up. The transformed global capital and the post-civil rights academy would, like their predecessors, selectively incorporate minoritized subjects in a neocolonialist narrative that would subjugate possible chances of reconfiguring the social landscape into a more inclusive, more broadly defined ideal. The social transformations sought by the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s may have convinced established institutions to accept change, but the latter have yet to accept difference.Less

Material Callings in an Outsourced Outpost: Accounts of an Aspiring Consumer

Sreedeep Bhattacharya

in Consumerist Encounters: Flirting with Things and Images

The author addresses how business process outsourcing (BPO) enabled a generation of urban educated youth to participate in consumption by offering new income opportunities, and instigating new ... More

The author addresses how business process outsourcing (BPO) enabled a generation of urban educated youth to participate in consumption by offering new income opportunities, and instigating new consumerist aspirations. Along with observing operational procedures, appointment processes, spatial dimensions, nature of work, and relations at work in BPOs, this chapter also observes its social impacts. A generation of college-goers flirted with this newfound earning opportunity since the late 1990s to have fun, make friends, or earn quickly. It explores how the consumerist desire gripped a generation that was earlier ineligible to participate in consumption. Narrating his cultural experiences of working in a BPO, the author documents a transition from abstinence to indulgence—a transition that offered freedom to eventuate material aspirations.Less

From Colony to Empire: Postmodern Faulkner

Leigh Anne Duck

in Global Faulkner

This chapter presents a reading of Absalom, Absalom! (1936) through the Cold War novel Requiem for a Nun (1951) in order to suggest that Faulkner’s concerns about global capital—so fully bodied forth ... More

This chapter presents a reading of Absalom, Absalom! (1936) through the Cold War novel Requiem for a Nun (1951) in order to suggest that Faulkner’s concerns about global capital—so fully bodied forth in the later work—may have shaped his understanding in ways he was not previously ready to name. It suggests that these novels urge us to think differently about history, which becomes in Faulkner’s work not a linear progression so much as a shifting set of vortices, forces, and incidents that reach across periods to transform consciousness and society. Unseating his work from linear time enables us to recognize Faulkner not only as a regional writer describing lost locales, but also as a regional writer describing incipient global transformations.Less

Conclusion

Prathama Benerjee

in Politics of Time: 'Primitives' and History-writing in a Colonial Society

This chapter tries to clarify the unfinished nature of both the work of colonial modernity and its critique. As the nation seeks to ‘liberalize’ its economy and mirror the trajectory of global ... More

This chapter tries to clarify the unfinished nature of both the work of colonial modernity and its critique. As the nation seeks to ‘liberalize’ its economy and mirror the trajectory of global capital, it claims the purity and righteousness of cultural conservatism. It is noted that by the 1930s, the colonized, by way of reclaiming ‘modern’ knowledge-disciplines from the colonizer, hinted at his/her own marginality and lateness in the present. The temporality of re-presentation neutralizes the temporality of encounter, and therefore the temporality of collective practice. Peoples like the Santals became ‘primitive’ in colonial modernity not only because of colonial strategies of other-ing but also because the colonized themselves tried to assume the representational location necessary for modern monetary and epistemological rationalities. Social practices need not necessarily generate others in any epistemological sense.Less

China

David Collins

in The BRIC States and Outward Foreign Direct Investment

This chapter explores the process of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from China. In the late 1970s, China started to integrate into the world economy. It evolved from a state that merely ... More

This chapter explores the process of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from China. In the late 1970s, China started to integrate into the world economy. It evolved from a state that merely attracted a high level of investment from abroad to one that has become a leading source of global investment capital. Chinese outward FDI to all regions of the world has since been developing. Among the leading sources of outward FDI from China are the financial services. China still promotes outward FDI, especially in research and development, production and marketing, and energy. Its comprehensive bilateral investment treaty (BIT) regime has drastically enhanced, with most recent BITs containing robust investor protection as well as investor-state arbitration provisions for a wide range of issues.Less

Audiences without Cinemas

Thomas Barker

in Indonesian Cinema after the New Order: Going Mainstream

Indonesia remains underserviced by cinemas with a comparatively low cinema to population ratio. For much of the late New Order and after reformasi, exhibition remained dominated by the 21 Group, a ... More

Indonesia remains underserviced by cinemas with a comparatively low cinema to population ratio. For much of the late New Order and after reformasi, exhibition remained dominated by the 21 Group, a crony company with film import monopoly rights. Recently, new investment has flowed into exhibition from the Blitzmegaplex company which is revealed to be well connected to New Order military figures. More recently new players have entered the industry including South Korea’s CGV who bought Blitz, the domestic conglomerate Lippo, and Raam Punjabi’s Platinum Cineplex chain, introducing both competition and global capital into the sector.Less

Like Oil and Water, with a Match: Militarized Commerce, Armed Conflict, and Human Security in Sudan

Audrey Macklin

in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones

This chapter uses the case of the Canadian company, Talisman Energy Inc., which operated until recently in South Sudan, to examine the impact of global capital investment on human displacement. It ... More

This chapter uses the case of the Canadian company, Talisman Energy Inc., which operated until recently in South Sudan, to examine the impact of global capital investment on human displacement. It describes how security has been redefined as the protection of oil company stock prices. The ways in which women have been influenced by the precipitous decline in human security are also explained. It then raises serious questions about the complicity of the Canadian state in the war in Sudan. The health care situation in Southern Sudan is dismal. The report found that oil extraction was exacerbating the armed conflict in Sudan. The actions of individuals, coalitions, and organizations are vital in exposing and destabilizing the warped triangulation of corporate security, military security, and human security.Less

Communities resisting environmental injustice in India: philanthrocapitalism and incorporation of people’s movements

Eurig Scandrett, Dharmesh Shah, and Shweta Narayan

in Environmental Justice, Popular Struggle and Community Development

With the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014, opportunities for inward investment by global capital have flourished, generating resistance to its socio-environmental impact. Land ... More

With the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014, opportunities for inward investment by global capital have flourished, generating resistance to its socio-environmental impact. Land grabs aimed at extracting minerals have seen the state backing transnational corporations against communities; Special Economic Zones and corridors for industrial development have multiplied with relaxed labour and environmental regulations, displacing communities and leaving those remaining fighting against pollution and contamination; the impacts of growth have led to urban gentrification and battles over diffuse pollution and access to space. Moreover, the funding of the non-profit sector has been inextricably linked to the global market through philanthrocapitalism by international Foundations and Corporate Social Responsibility, with widespread co-option into the neoliberal agenda. Environmental justice campaigners are faced with a significant challenge of supporting people’s movements at the grassroots whilst working for a coordinated opposition to its cause in post-colonial neoliberalism.Less

Conclusion

Victoria C. Stead

in Becoming Landowners: Entanglements of Custom and Modernity in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste

Mapping the destabilization of land and power in conditions of entanglement is a complex task. If there is a dominant tendency emerging out of entanglement and the destabilisation of structures of ... More

Mapping the destabilization of land and power in conditions of entanglement is a complex task. If there is a dominant tendency emerging out of entanglement and the destabilisation of structures of power, it is to the diminishing of local autonomy. Still, even in deeply unequal and hierarchical situations, Melanesians and others do speak to—and speak back to—an entangled world. For many, customary land is the place from which they speak. Moving beyond Melanesia and the Pacific, a metaphor of entanglement offers possibilities for thinking globally about the impacts and experiences of change, and the significance of forms of connection to land. A globalized world is an entangled world, in which all people and places are implicated. Globally, entanglements confront and disrupt the smooth workings of capital and the state system, fracturing taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to be in the world, and offering powerful articulations of alterity.Less

Global capital and marginality

Cynthia S. Hamilton

in Sara Paretsky: Detective fiction as trauma literature

This chapter examines Paretsky’s indictment of white-collar crime and corporate capitalism. Her presentation of violence as integral to corporate capitalism gives her critique a sharp edge. This ... More

This chapter examines Paretsky’s indictment of white-collar crime and corporate capitalism. Her presentation of violence as integral to corporate capitalism gives her critique a sharp edge. This chapter looks at the unexplored references to particular incidents of corporate malfeasance and political corruption in Paretsky’s fiction, incidents that received considerable press coverage at the time Paretsky was working on her novels, such as the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in Killing Orders, the asbestosis cases involving the Johns-Manville Company (Toxic Shock), the political manoeuvrings surrounding the Presidential Towers Redevelopment Project in Chicago (Burn Marks), the rise of for-profit medicine (Bitter Medicine), the commercialisation of public services, such as the prison service (Hard Time), and the irresponsible business practices of the big-box stores (Fire Sale). An awareness of these references and resonances brings Paretsky’s political agenda into clearer focus. Such references enable the detective novel to transcend any notional support for the status quo implicit in the detective’s role in re-establishing order at the novel’s end.Less

Learning and teaching: reflections on an environmental justice school for activists in South Africa

Bobby Peek and Jeanne Prinsloo

in Environmental Justice, Popular Struggle and Community Development

Post-apartheid South Africa with all its initial promises to address injustice continues to be a highly unequal country with an economy consistent with neoliberal global capital and a presumption ... More

Post-apartheid South Africa with all its initial promises to address injustice continues to be a highly unequal country with an economy consistent with neoliberal global capital and a presumption that the spoils of something termed economic ‘growth' trickle down to those positioned at the bottom of the wealth and resource pyramid. groundWork, an environmental justice organisation, runs the Environmental Justice School (EJS) for activists to develop a strong and informed cadre of grassroots activists to contribute towards the mobilisation and transformation to a more just society. This chapter contextualises the school, describes its curriculum design and draws on the voices and reflections of participants and authors. Informed by Freirean and popular education principles, it is underpinned by a vision of a better world, beginning with the world the participants encounter presently.Less

Laboratories of Universality: A Genealogy of Solitary Latin American Inventors

Carlos Fonseca Suárez

in Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America

Carlos Fonseca Suárez read Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “El Aleph” as a reflection upon the limits of technological universalism as well as a reconfiguration of modern cosmopolitanism. Carlos ... More

Carlos Fonseca Suárez read Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “El Aleph” as a reflection upon the limits of technological universalism as well as a reconfiguration of modern cosmopolitanism. Carlos Fonseca Suárez then explores the figure of José Arcadio Buendía—founder of Macondo in Cien años de soledad (1967)—who in his obsession with scientific innovation takes Borges’s exploration of technological modernity and the impasses of modern progressivism even further, proposing instead a new dialectical model of universalism. Finally, Carlos Fonseca Suárez concludes by adding a final star to this constellation by exploring how the character of Luca Belladona in Ricardo Piglia’s 2010 novel Blanco nocturno allows for a rereading of this Humboldt’s plainsman scene in the contemporary socioeconomic context, where the relation between the global and the local, center and periphery, becomes intertwined in the elusive informational networks of global capital.Less