Philippine political and bureaucratic organisations are usually presented as weak, permeable, distorted and corrupt and, as such, lie some way from a proper condition of formality. There is no question that informal behaviour can and does have a deleterious effect on the civil service and the organisations it staffs. But it is also clear that, within the bureaucracy, there is a deal of positive…
Set a few years after China's opening to the various forces of globalisation, the film Shanghai Dreams (2005) tells the story of the conflict between Qinghong, a 17 year-old schoolgirl who wishes to remain in her hometown of Guiyang, and her father, Lao Wu, whose dream of returning to his hometown of Shanghai is stirred by reports of the better life others have obtained as a result of Deng Xiao…
This paper is an attempt to reconsider the opposition between consumption and production in social sciences through a detailed analysis of the production of Chinese subtitles for a pirated Japanese adult video (AV) clip in Taiwan. We demonstrate that the way local pirate merchants provide Chinese subtitles is very much guided by the sexual roles of men and women, or what Sahlins calls a cultura…
Most large Chinese corporations publish e-magazines to which employees are encouraged to contribute on various topics, ranging from management and work issues to creative writing and other creative “cultural” work such as poetry, calligraphy and photography. These e-magazines provide a central venue where employees can learn about what is important to the firm's management. They are one of the …
Chinese cooking is popular in contemporary Japan. It is also a favourite subject of gastronomic writings that discuss not only the cooking techniques and ingredients but also the cultural meaning of the cuisine. This paper analyses the central concerns of this literature and points out its broader cultural-political implications. It contends that Japanese writings on Chinese food share a set of…
This study employs a phenomenological hermeneutic approach to analyse narratives written by mainland Chinese people who care for a family member with serious mental illness. Locating culture at the centre of the analysis, the study explicates and explores the salient themes and subthemes in texts that were originally published in a monthly psychoeducational newsletter. Analysis reveals that men…
This piece considers the financial crisis of 2008 through the lens of the derivative, by locating both the derivative and the crisis in the broader context of post-war US conjuncture. Drawing upon the work of Marx, Postone and von Mises, I argue that the derivative can be seen as a response to the collapse of any viable logic of commensuration. Its failure has to be understood, again, in the co…
This article examines the concept and the discontinuous historical usage of the term 'economic rights' in American political discourse from the perspective of democratic political freedom. It views the idea and ideology of 'economic rights' as a discursive marker pointing to historically contingent relations between government, national economy and individual freedom. It focuses on the only two…
As the faith in a rational and efficient market collapses there has been a frantic search to account for the irrational motives underwriting economic behavior. A new popular discourse of economics grounded in behaviorism, models of social contagion, and the sociobiology of affect has emerged. We focus on one particularly influential instantiation of this new discourse, George Akerlof and Robert…
This paper explores some aspects of the present crisis, including the problem of how to think about crises in the current conjuncture. It has four main parts: the first and second explore the changing imagery of markets as disenchantment sets in; the third considers what sort of crisis is taking place; and the fourth and final part of the paper considers how innovations and interventions direct…
This paper explores the popularity of contemporary expressions of delight in celebrity downfall, or Schadenfreude towards celebrity culture, and questions to what extent they can be understood as cultural critiques of economic inequality. For just as the economy has its own parables, so do 'cultural' expressions contain parables of normativity about economic life. We argue that Schadenfreude's …
This paper introduces Brown Space as a conceptual category to understand the particular spatial politics of Brown as an 'identificatory strategy' after 9/11. I use the taxi cab and the daily life of the 'brown' taxi driver as a vehicle to navigate the new micro-politics of brown in public space. Within the popular imaginary I locate two dominating configurations of the taxi post-9/11 which work…
This essay explores the circulation of fear and suspicion in Toronto and Montreal during perceived national security crises, which in recent years have been heavily influenced by post-9/11 US events, discourses and legal acts. It discusses how non-status residents and 'Canadian-born brown' residents have both become the focus of suspicion and intensified their own suspicion of fellow residents …
In Barbados economic hardship has a color. Ask Barbadians 'how're you doing?' and, if things are difficult in any way they might answer, 'Tings brown!' This seems to be an especially appropriate phrase for this paper which explores the inter-relations between contemporary racialized identificatory strategies and economic hardship in the Caribbean. My interest is in exploring the challenges Cari…
Under US leadership, political structures in the post-9/11 world have developed and deployed rhetorical techniques aimed at identifying, excluding, and prosecuting specific bodies. In this paper, we analyze governmental and cultural rhetoric in the United States during 2006 on the issues of immigration (including immigration policies and proposed reform) and same-sex marriage (including bans to…
This paper offers a genealogical sketch of the figure of the Muslim Other as it is figured in the post-Cold War popular and political imaginary. It explores why 'culture' has acquired a putative explanatory power in the post-Cold War (geo)politics. In addressing differentialist racism, it posits Islamophobia as an ideological response that conflates histories, politics, societies and cultures o…
This paper examines the socio-economic, political, and cultural transformations that have been taking place in South America during the past ten years, particularly in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Whereas at the level of the states the transformations do not seem to venture beyond alternative forms of modernization, the discourses and strategies of some social movements suggest radical poss…
Somali refugees who fled the collapse of their homeland and resettled in the US narrate 'who they are' within a bewildering entanglement of cultural differences layered with diasporic tensions. This analysis examines the storytelling of a young woman refugee to Lewiston, Maine, who embodies the performative tensions that animate Somali identity at this intense historical moment and in this dens…
This article investigates the shaping of contemporary drug-using (and non-drug-using) subjectivities through operations of choice and consumption. Examining various registers of 'possession,' it argues that in the construction of both docile and irredeemably flawed consumers, 'choice' (and its negation) is pivotal. Exploring motifs of choice, possession and pleasure in the operations of 'normal…
In India, the phrase 'fake encounter' refers to the extrajudicial killing of a civilian followed by the official claim that the victim was a Pakistani infiltrator killed in a legitimate military encounter with police or army forces. This article explores the widespread pattern of fake encounters in Kashmir Valley in order to shed light on the processes through which violence and terror become f…