International and Intercultural Communication Commons^™

Policing Democracy: Overcoming Obstacles To Citizen Security In Latin America, Pablo Policzer

International Dialogue

Latin America is more democratic today than in the recent past, yet in places also far more violent. Parts of the region suffer the world’s highest crime rates, and a widespread sense of insecurity fuels calls for tougher policing. Understanding the origins of this problem, and suggesting ways out of it, is Mark Ungar’s aim in this ambitious and insightful book.

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 5

Majority Rule: A Dysfunctional Polity Consensus: An Inclusive Democracy, Peter Emerson

International Dialogue

Numerous electoral systems have been devised over the years but, in decision-making, many forums still rely on the same procedure that was used in ancient Greece: majority voting. Hence, majority rule. In many plural multi-ethnic and/or multi-religious societies, the effects have often been negative. This article considers voting procedures in three inter-related contexts: decision-making, elections, and governance. With regard to conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Ukraine, it shows, both in decision-making and in elections, how simplistic win-or-lose ballots have exacerbated tensions. And it then suggests a more inclusive polity in which win-win voting systems might help to alleviate …

The Mapuche In Modern Chile: A Cultural History, Ramón J. Guerra

International Dialogue

In Joanna Crow’s cultural exposition of Chile’s largest indigenous population, The Mapuche in Modern Chile: A Cultural History, she makes a concerted effort to highlight the cultural components of the group’s identity and presence both in negotiation with and in resistance to the larger Chilean state throughout history. As a primary target of her research, the post-colonial approach illuminates the agency-driven Mapuche as being continuously reimagined in the nation’s history—not necessarily restructured but more to the point of being reconsidered. In order to elicit this type of reconsideration, Crow exposes the prominence of the “historic Mapuche” image as the dominant …

Making Human Rights A Reality, Debra L. Delaet

International Dialogue

Emilie Hafner-Burton’s Making Human Rights a Reality offers an accessible and informed analysis of the significant gap between the normative universalism of international human rights law and its limited effects in practice. The book’s primary purpose is to offer a pragmatic, strategic alternative to global legalism for promoting the progressive realization of fundamental human rights. In Hafner-Burton’s view, the cause of human rights promotion would be better-served by relying on states with strong human rights records (both in terms of respecting rights at home and commitment to promoting them abroad) to use foreign policy as a tool for changing the …

Africa In World Politics: Engaging A Changing Global Order, Manfred Wogugu

International Dialogue

The issue of central concern for the editors and contributing authors of this book is whether Africa’s emergence on the world political scene will usher in the enabling environment for sustainable broad-spectrum development in the political, socio-economic, cultural and environmental spheres. The authors also make an attempt to address the issue of economic growth for the region. The underlying assumption is that the spread of economic growth to all countries in the continent, if it prevails, will reduce poverty and inequality and ultimately improve the quality of life for Africans. Against the backdrop of the global economic and political order …

Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism, Robert Sinnerbrink

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek continues his idiosyncratic critique of global capitalism, democratic culture, and neoliberal ideology in his latest 400+ page tome, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of dialectical Materialism, which promises to provide, much like his Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (Verso, 2012), a resolutely idealist “new foundation” for dialectical materialism. This is a promise that Žižek has made for some years now, since what we might call his “system” turn became manifest in the publication of a series of major books (In Defense of Lost Causes [Verso, 2008]; Living in the End Times, Less …

The Implementation Of Communication Theories To Assist In Resolving Perennial International Conflicts, Kelly Witkop

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

The Responsibility To Protect: Emerging Norm Or Failed Doctrine?, Camila Pupparo

Global Tides

This paper seeks to investigate the current shift from the non-intervention norm towards the “Responsibility to Protect,” commonly abbreviated as “RtoP,” which actually mandates intervention in cases of humanitarian intervention disasters. I will look at the May 2011 application of the R2P doctrine to the humanitarian crisis in Libya and assess whether it was a success or a failure. Many critics of the “Responsibility to Protect” norm consider it to be yet another imperial tool used by the West to pursue national interests, so this paper analyzes this argument in detail, referring to case study examples, particularly in the Middle …

The Power Of Creativity: How Web-Based Parody Encourages Chinese Civil Participation, Amber Boczar

International ResearchScape Journal

This article investigates that relationship between e’gao (parody using web-based media) and Chinese civil participation. E’gao (恶搞 EUH-gow) uses videos, images, and text based campaigns that use humor to remove fear of political commentary and action. By detailing the development of China’s internet use, and the creation of the e’gao movement, I argue that e’gao removes the fear of participating in campaigns and movements, which criticize government policy and actions on both local and state levels, by using humor and anonymity of large online numbers. E’gao can provide a way for the common citizens to mold policy, and hold authority …

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 4.

Žižek’S Hegel: Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism, Gavin Hyman

International Dialogue

Followers of Slavoj Žižek’s work had long been awaiting his “big book on Hegel.” In interviews and other appearances, he made no secret of the fact that this work was in progress and, furthermore, that he considered it to be a labour of love, his magnum opus, and, in a sense, a culmination. Big the book certainly is—1010 pages of text to be precise. If such a book were to be written by any other author, readers would doubtless have waited considerably longer to receive it. But so prolific is this author that the waiting has been minimal, and many …

Martin Heidegger And The First World War, David A. White

International Dialogue

The subtitle of this work is “Being and Time as Funeral Oration.” This addition helps a reader to appreciate that the book functions on various levels: scholarly, to the extent that it offers a reading of selected details in Heidegger’s first major work; historical, in that Altman asserts with great vigor that Being and Time should be seen as a “funeral oration” for those who died in World War One; biographical, in that we read much about Heidegger’s personal actions in political and academic contexts leading to and during both WWI and a decade after the conclusion of the “Great …

A World Of Becoming, Stanimir Panayotov

International Dialogue

It is difficult to respond in a genre other than philosophical prose when writing about one. Philosophical prose is a very demanding and small club: it is almost like the poetry club of philosophy recognized in and by itself. Few are the specimens of the genre and plenty are those raising hands from within. This is largely because genre-determined writing such as this one is both about style and Zeitgeist. And to rise up to the standards of styling the spirit(s) of time is an ordeal of both the heart and the mind even trained thinkers fail to do. With …

Democracy, Islam, And Secularism In Turkey, Renat Shaykhutdinov

International Dialogue

This book edited by Ahmet Kuru and Alfred Stepan provides an important contribution to the understanding of the nexus between democracy and democratization, religion and secularism in the context of Turkey, arguably the most stable Muslim-majority democracy in the greater Middle East. The volume features a select group of scholars and policy makers and is a product of two conferences held at Columbia University with the subsequent meetings and a thorough review and revision process. Among the contributors to the volume is Ergun Özbudun, the head of the academic commission for the new constitutional draft, whose chapters problematize the conflict …

Leviathans At The Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous And Corporate Actors In Papua New Guinea, Jerry K. Jacka

International Dialogue

Social analysis in anthropology today “oscillates uneasily” between a concern with Foucauldian global regimes of governance on the one hand and Deleuzian assemblages of agentive actors on the other. In Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea, Alex Golub asks if there is “a better way to do justice to a contemporary scene characterized by both spontaneity and regime” (2). Golub’s book seeks to find this middle road through the analysis of the development of a world-class gold mine on the homelands of a group of indigenous people—the Ipili— living in the highlands …

Kindly Inquisitors, The New Attack On Free Thought, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

International Dialogue

George F. Will’s forward to the 2013 edition of this book provides important focus to the problems arising when even one person is “offended” by free speech (xiii). From campus speech codes to legal and social theory aimed at balancing the First Amendment against other rights, Will flatly rejects the liberal movement toward “sensitivity,” “inclusiveness,” “multiculturalism” and other values that attempt to limit expression: What is needed is a book explaining why the usual, and intended, result of this practice is a finding that those objectives… are more worthy than the objective of maintaining a liberal regime of protected expression. …

What Is A Palestinian State Worth?, Paul Kriese

International Dialogue

Sari Nusseibeh begins his study of the “Palestinian problem” with the comment “this is not an academic study” (18). Maybe that is why this particular study is so good. When asked to write this review my first response was not very positive. Most studies of this region lack clarity or are so ideological as to not be very useful. Many of these studies often also claim to be “academic.” Nusseibeh’s study is, unlike many reviews, a masterful academic study. His study succinctly and accurately portrays the tangled and tortured history of the region from a view that is both sympathetic …

The Words And The Land: Israeli Intellectuals And The Nationalist Myth, Abdelwahab Hiba Hechiche

International Dialogue

Shlomo Sand opens this book with a significant sentence: “Every book is part autobiography” and, consequently, “autobiographical confession” (7). Although he was born in 1946, his early recollection has been marked by a certain residue of the consequences of the Shoa, because as a child he was an eyewitness of the living conditions of people “like his Polish parents moving from one “displaced persons camp to another” (8). But during that same period of his early childhood, his memory resonated with his father’s reminding him that “we had taken someone else’s home” (8).The reader begins to witness an existential ethical …

Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character And Spirit Of Chinese Zen, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

This book embraces the essence of talks Guo Jun gave at a fourteen-day retreat at Chan Forest in the hills of Jakarta in 2010 as well as subsequent conversations the editor and his wife had with him. It is highly readable and accessible to the reader. It has poetic, spontaneous and witty qualities, providing deep insight into Chan (also spelled Cha’n) Buddhism. Chan is the Chinese form of Zen and is not well-known in the West as Zen is, but it derives from the traditions of India. It has flourished and continued to develop through many masters and its teachings …

Letters To Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, Russell Jacoby

International Dialogue

“Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.” So opens a recent New York Times column headlined, “Professors, We Need You!” (February 2014) Nicholas Kristof’s thoughts on the disappearance of the professoriate elicited heated responses, both irate and enthusiastic. The flap illustrates that the place of intellectuals in American life continues to generate controversy. Samuel McCormick, as assistant professor of communications at Purdue University, joins this on-going dispute with Letters to Power, a wide-ranging and historically informed study of intellectual dissent. …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 4

The Sports Gene: Inside The Science Of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, Dave Ogden

International Dialogue

David Epstein is another author chasing the elusive answer to one of the basic and ageless issues of social and natural sciences: Nature versus nurture. His discoveries and conclusions in The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance are not necessarily new, but he provides ample and interesting evidence that leans more heavily on the side of nature. In doing so, he takes on stock believers in Karl Anders Ericsson’s theoretical set called “deliberate practice.” Ericsson and his colleagues have studied elite “performers” in a variety of fields, including typing, chess playing, musicianship, and athletic skills. Ericsson found …

Human Rights & Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice, Pattaka Sa-Ngimnet

International Dialogue

This book explains how international human rights laws are created by consensus through representatives of local and national governments and then become translated into content acceptable to local communities. In an introductory chapter the author presents the overall arguments of the entire work. She also gives examples that support the arguments and lays out the pattern of human rights legislation by using the specific example of gender violence. Emphasizing language, she explains how it is understood in diverse ways. The rest of the book is concerned with more specific examples. Chapter two deals with creating human rights law (36–71). Chapter …

Avatar And Nature Spirituality, Martin Schönfeld

International Dialogue

“To put it mildly, the world is a mess.” Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, 27 July 2014 James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) was the first film to combine stereoscopic imagining and motion-capture animation for a flawless 3-D presentation. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and won three, for Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Effects. It was also the first box-office hit to gross more than $2 billion, and it remains the highest-grossing film to date. It made cinematic history. But it was more than an aesthetic triumph. Avatar is also a cultural …

War And Peace Theology In German And Swedish Christian Zionism, Kristian Steiner

International Dialogue

This is a comparative study of how Swedish and German Christian Zionist literature from 1967–2012 portrays the chances for peace and the risk for war, globally and in the Middle East. Christian Zionism is a theology supporting the establishment and the preservation of the modern state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. Christian Zionist literature, in Germany and Sweden, demonstrates very little hope for peace, since this world is assumed fallen, heading for the apocalypse, in the hands of the Devil, and inhabited by a sinful humanity beyond improvement. The image of Arabs is clearly that of an enemy image; …

Is Multiculturalism Good For Children? The Rights Of The Child And Multiculturalist Policies In Sweden, Pernilla Ouis, Göran Adamson, Aje Carlbom

International Dialogue

In the present paper, the objective is to investigate if multiculturalism is good for children. The method is to use secondary sources, as well as current examples from Swedish society, to show how multiculturalist policies have negative consequences for minority children's rights. The paper, as well as previous research, reveals that parents of immigrant origin often forbid children to attend school activities such as camps, gymnastics, swimming, and lessons in music and religion. Parents motivate their actions with reference to their traditions and religion, and a fear that their children might learn sexual immorality. The wishes of parents are accepted …

The Duty To Rescue And The Duty To Aid The Starving, Per Bauhn

International Dialogue

In this article I intend to argue that while there are certainly important similarities between the duty to rescue and the duty to aid the famine-stricken and starving, there are also important differences between these two duties. Both the duty to rescue and the duty to provide aid need to be qualified by conditions regarding necessity, possibility, and comparable cost, as well as by a principle concerning special relationships of responsibility. However, while the duty to rescue can be fulfilled by individual agents, the duty to aid the famine-stricken and starving requires large-scale interventions to change political and social structures, …

Jerusalem Obscured: The Crescent On The Temple: The Dome Of The Rock As Image Of The Ancient Jewish Sanctuary, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

To begin with, what is it? In order to answer this question one must, of course, qualify it by asking—to whom? Pamela Berger in The Crescent on the Temple: The Dome of the Rock as Image of the Ancient Jewish Sanctuary has done a great service by supplying us with a history of the iconographic representation of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock (the Qubbat al-Sakhrah). While no publication could ever exhaustively summarize the countless visual and literary portrayals of this world heritage site, Berger not only makes a valiant attempt at such but necessarily changes the way that almost all …

The Transgressive Allure Of White Gold In Peruvian Amazonia: Towards A Genealogy Of Coca Capitalisms And Social Dread: Andean Cocaine: The Making Of A Global Drug; Coca's Gone: Of Might And Right In The Huallaga Post-Boom, Bartholomew Dean

International Dialogue

“I have tested this effect of coca, which wards off hunger, sleep, and fatigue and steels one to intellectual effort, some dozen times on myself; I had no opportunity to engage in physical work.”—Sigmund Freud, from ‘Über Coca’, Centralblatt für die ges. Therapie, 2, 1884.

Circulating through multiple regimes of value, the transgressive allure of coca has gripped the Occidental imagination for more than a century and a half, shaping the contours of modernity; first as a magical elixir, then to a demonized underground drug, and eventually being transformed into a lucrative global commodity with grievous effects. Coca and cocaine …