Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Creating a Positive View

By Ellen D.B. Riggle, PhD

As an academic researcher, I have typically taught and written  about things that would depress and scare ordinary people (actually, these things depress and scare me too):  depression and anxiety, psychological abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, violent attacks, discrimination and everyday prejudice.  I discuss these topics in the context of the stresses that people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) face and have to cope with.  It seems that in my academic training, I was taught to focus on negative issues.  Implicitly I was taught that if nothing is “wrong” then everything must be okay, and we don’t need to talk about that.

Focusing on “what’s wrong” is important.  For example, the current focus on the violence and psychological abuse associated with bullying is essential to providing all children and adults with a safe environment for living their lives.  We are all responsible for solving this problem so we all need to be talking about it.  But in focusing on what’s wrong, sometimes we forget to also focus on “what’s right.” 

 “What’s right” are stories that often get ignored or that just aren’t seen as interesting enough to make the news.  A case in point:  my friends, two women who have been partners for decades and are devoted parents and now grandparents, spend their time and energy acting as mentors and positive role models for young LGBT people and their allies in the pursuit of social justice -- they don’t make the news.  The Rhode Island Catholic Bishop who opposes marriage equality by stating that “homosexual activity is immoral, an offense to God, a serious sin” – he makes the news.  This creates an imbalance in the messages that we are exposed to and impacts the stories that come to mind when we think about LGBT lives.

If we are to successfully address issues such as stigmatization, bullying and other public health risks for LGBT people, we must create a culture that, on a regular basis, celebrates instead of denigrates LGBT lives. How do we change this imbalance of messages and create a celebratory culture?  One way to address this challenge is to share the positive stories of LGBT lives.  In our research with over a thousand LGBT people, we have heard stories of personal growth and life lessons that can benefit us all.  We have heard stories about the benefits of living an authentic life and how that brings people closer to their family and friends.  We have heard stories from many people about the importance of being flexible and creative in relationships with their partners so that both partners flourish.  We have heard about how people develop compassion for others and engage in work or volunteer activities to support and benefit people in need.  All of these actions come from positive qualities that people associate with their LGBT identities. 

Our personal stories have power over how we define our own lives and they have power when we share them with others.  Talking with others about the positive aspects of LGBT identities, recognizing the benefits of these identities in individual lives and the life of our communities, is an important part of creating a celebratory culture.  Sharing stories of LGBT lives will help to re-balance and re-focus the conversations that people have. 

Ellen D.B. Riggle is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Kentucky.  She is co-author of A Positive View of LGBTQ: Embracing Identity and Cultivating Well-Being.  For more information about her research, go to www.PrismResearch.org.

Addicted to Addictions

By David J. Ley

A few weeks ago, a woman came up to me after a presentation I had given, on why I believed sex addiction was a dangerous myth. She was in tears, as she told me about her son whom she had lost about a decade ago to the ravages of alcoholism. She told me that near the end of his life, her son was in a very expensive private-pay treatment facility, and called her up to ask if he had ever been sexually abused.

As this mother told me this story, and disclosed this part, a look of anguish creased her face. “I told him that I didn’t think he ever was, and he told me that at the facility, therapists had told him that not only was he an alcoholic, but that he was a sex addict as well. And that his sex addiction must have come from being sexually abused.”

The lady’s son sadly died a few weeks after that, from complications related to his severe substance abuse. For a decade, this poor woman has lived with tremendous fear and guilt, guilt that her son might have been sexually abused, something she didn’t prevent, or even know about. She was anguished that the unknown abuse, and her apparent unknowing neglect, might  have contributed to her son’s tragic life and loss.

I was the first person this woman ever heard, who said that sex addiction was a myth, a moralizing and unsubstantiated label that people throw around callously and casually. I gave her some peace, she told me, because for the first time in a decade, she could see that her son probably hadn’t been abused, and wasn’t addicted to sex. These therapists were merely riding the train of sex addiction, throwing that diagnosis at anything they could lasso with it, regardless of the consequences. If they could convince her son that he wasn’t just an alcoholic, but a sex addict too, what did they get out of it? Who knows? Maybe money. Or maybe they just saw every problem in the young man’s life as a form of addiction, and threw that label around to impress themselves.

A few decades or so ago, therapists believed they could recover memories of abuse, uncover buried memories of sexual, physical and even satanic abuse, in their patients. Because they saw symptoms they thought were related to a history of abuse, it didn’t matter that the patient said “Hey, I wasn’t ever abused.” But it turned out the patients were right and the therapists wrong. Lives were ruined, people went to jail and families were devastated because of the therapist’s well-intended arrogance.

They thought they were helping. But hundreds of lawsuits and settlements have now shown that those therapists hurt people. The myth of sex addiction hurts people too. This is why I’m challenging it every chance I can get. To demand that these therapists be responsible with the power they wield over people’s lives and fears.

David J. Ley is a clinical psychologist in practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He provides clinical and consultative services in numerous other states. Dr. Ley currently serves as Executive Director of a large outpatient behavioral health agency in Albuquerque and maintains a current caseload of clients. He is the author of The Myth of Sex Addiction and   Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them.

Religious Freedom and the Obama Contraceptive Mandate

By Stephen V. Monsma

An on-going controversy concerns the Obama administration’s attempt to mandate that under the new Affordable Care Act employers’ health insurance plans must include contraceptive coverage.  And contraceptive coverage is defined broadly enough to include sterilization procedures and what some consider abortifacients.  This has aroused the strong opposition of the Catholic Church—which has long opposed artificial birth control as a violation of its religious beliefs—and some evangelical Protestant groups, largely on the basis of the inclusion of what they consider abortifacients. 

Those who oppose the contraceptive mandate are claiming their religious freedom rights are being violated, since the mandate would require them to act in violation of their deeply-held religious beliefs.  Others claim that this a public health issue, not a religious freedom issue, since  assuring that contraceptives are readily available will protect women from unwanted pregnancies and reduce the number of abortions.  As a recent columnist in the New York Times wrote, “[T]he provision of preventive services without a co-pay does not interfere with a religious practice or ceremony.” 

This controversy—which has generated much heat and is likely to continue to do so throughout this election year—largely turns on one’s understanding of what constitutes a religious organization or a religious practice.   We all cringe at the thought of a government edict telling St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York how it is to celebrate the mass or who may or may not officiate at the mass.  We all recognize this would be a violation of the religious freedom rights we all hold dear.  The organization in this example (St. Patrick’s Cathedral) is clearly accepted by all as a religious organization and the practice (the celebration of the mass) as a religious practice. 

 But this agreement breaks down and the controversy explodes when the organization is not a religious congregation in the traditional sense and the practice does not involve a religious ritual or ceremony.  What about a nonprofit spouse abuse program that was begun by an evangelical Protestant church, is still largely supported by church members, and explicitly states that it is providing services in obedience to Jesus Christ and in his name?  Is it a religious organization?  And are the volunteers and staff who counsel with and offer help to women who have been abused and preyed upon engaging in a religious act? Or what about a Catholic college that takes its religious commitment seriously and seeks to understand the world within the context of historic Catholic thought and reflection?  Is it a religious organization?  And is a professor who seeks to apply Catholic social teaching in her sociology course engaged in a religious act?

As I explain in my book, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, for historic reasons Americans, and especially the educated elite, tend to exclude as religious organizations and religious practices organizations and practices outside of religious congregations and their core religious rituals and ceremonies.  But such a narrow view of religion is untenable.  It is inaccurate to say that when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., led African American demonstrators out of their churches and into the streets in defense of racial justice he changed from a religious leader to a secular leader.  An official statement the National Association of Evangelicals testifies to its belief that its faith not only encompasses acts of love and mercy but demands them: “Jesus said that those who do not care for the needy and the imprisoned will depart eternally from the living God.”  The nature of religion as extending beyond the confines of church and synagogue was clearly summarized by Robert Bellah and his associates in their classic, Habits of the Heart, when they wrote:  “Yet religion, and certainly biblical religion, is concerned with the whole of life—with social, economic, and political matters as well as with private and personal ones.” 

To me, this means that when a governmental edict clashes with faith-based organizations’ thought-out, long-held, religiously-based beliefs and practices, our public policies should do all they can to accommodate those beliefs and practices.  This is what protects the pluralism and diversity to which we as a society claim to aspire.

Coming back to the current controversy over the contraceptive mandate, this means no church should seek to force its view of contraceptives onto all of society; no government mandate should seek to force faith-based organizations to provide contraceptives in violation of their religious beliefs.  Religious liberty and religious freedom rights are indeed at stake here.  We as a people have long lived together with our deepest differences by each group respecting those with whom it does not agree and allowing them, to the fullest extent possible in keeping with public health and safety, to follow their beliefs.  My book mentioned earlier suggests that we need to renew this commitment and broaden it to include the host of educational, health, and social service faith-based organizations that continue to contribute much to our life together.

 

About the author:

Stephen V. Monsma is a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute at Calvin College and professor of political science emeritus at Pepperdine University. He is the author of numerous works for faith-based organizations and church and state relations, including Faith, Hope, and Jobs and Putting Faith in Partnerships.

The Messages in President Obama’s Spotify Playlist

By Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper 

Now that 2012 is upon us, so is another presidential election. Barack Obama is seeking a second term as the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, and four candidates are currently vying for the Republican Party nomination. There are many strategic decisions which these politicians make to promote their candidacies, including crafting inspiring speeches, offering eloquent answers to interview questions, and creating patriotic backdrops at campaign events. For as long as there have been American presidential elections, one of the candidates’ quadrennial considerations has also been selection of the right music.

President Obama made news on February 9th when he announced his campaign’s Spotify playlist. For those not familiar with Spotify, it is an online music service that streams songs to members of the website. President Obama released his playlist in 2012 in much the same way that he announced his iPod playlist during his 2008 candidacy. Playlists such as this can send powerful messages to the electorate, as they can transmit political ideas or associate a candidate with a notable musical celebrity. With this in mind, let’s have a look at a few of the 28 songs on President Obama’s Spotify playlist.

One of the more notable selections is Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” President Obama previously sang the first few bars of this song at an appearance in the Apollo Theater in New York City on January 19th. Although originally written as a romantic song when first released by Green in the early 1970s, the song’s title and hook offer a powerful message from an incumbent president to the voters: vote for me, so that we can mutually continue along the path we are on now.

A second song choice by President Obama that musically asks for another opportunity to serve the country is U2’s “Even Better than the Real Thing.” In multiple places the overarching message is that the listener will be satisfied by giving the singer one more chance. The song goes on to refer to its audience as the real thing and even better than that. This can be interpreted as a way to “pump up” supporters of the President. Again, like “Let’s Stay Together,” the lyrics of “Even Better than the Real Thing” were clearly originally written with romantic intent, but the key catchy parts of the song can be co-opted to express relevant political messages.

REO Speedwagon’s “Roll with the Changes” exemplifies another important political theme for President Obama. The title of this tune harkens back to one of the President’s major campaign slogans from 2008: Change we can believe in. The lyrics go on to tell the listener that the singer is available when the listener is ready to move along with the changes that lay ahead. The lyrics also tell the listener that the tables have turned, and they imply that the darkest hour has passed. Certainly, one could see this as a message from President Obama that the economy is on the mend and things are getting better because of the changes he has implemented.

The songs a campaign chooses can also be used to thwart the message of the political opposition. One song on President Obama’s playlist that does this is “No Nostalgia” by Ages and Ages. Recently, Republican candidates have expressed a message that the country is on the wrong path, and only they can restore America to its past greatness. The hook of “No Nostalgia” takes aim at this notion, claiming that instead of looking to the past we should concentrate on the promise of what our country is now and can become in the future.

Of course, one must be careful not to read too much into these lyrics and song choices. Still, there is no doubt that President Obama and those working on his reelection campaign thought long and hard about which songs to release. Ultimately, song choice is an important consideration for presidential campaigns. The right song can become a memorable way to express important political messages. On the other hand, the wrong songs can muddle a campaign message, and key song omissions can lead to hurt feelings among those who were musically snubbed.

____________________

About the authors: Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper are the authors of Don't Stop Thinking about the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns.  Benjamin Schoening is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and music director of the Red Cedar Choir in Rice Lake.  Eric T. Kasper is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and the municipal judge in Rice Lake.

Bahrain: A Kingdom of Fear and Repression

By Emile Nakhleh

Bahrain, a small island country in the Persian Gulf used to be viewed by the international community as a relatively tolerant, inclusive, and liberal country. Once the “Arab Spring” erupted a few months ago in neighboring Arab countries, pro-reform demonstrations gathered steam in and around Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain demanding political and economic reform. The ruling Al-Khalifa family reacted with brutality and repression, including arrests and firing at protesters, detention of journalists, academics, parliamentarians, medical doctors and health providers, without regard for basic human rights. Within a few short months, Bahrain has become a Saudi satellite—politically and ideologically—and is no longer a shining beacon of tolerance in the Gulf.

Several reasons might explain why Bahrain’s uprising so far has not achieved the same results as in Tunisia and Egypt:

• A small population (barely over half a million)
• Pervasive Saudi influence
• The military and security leadership hails from the ruling family
• A tacit American and international support for al-Khalifa suppression of the uprising because of the stationing of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, concern about Iran’s influence in the Gulf, and worries about the potential for instability in the oil region.

Amnesty International in a recent briefing paper describes Bahrain as a “human rights disaster” and suggests that the regime suppression of dissent through arbitrary arrests and torture has created an atmosphere of fear and sectarianism. The al-Khalifa family heads a Sunni minority with access to power, privilege, and wealth and rules over a Shia majority that is mostly poor and dispossessed, with minimal access to government jobs and lucrative economic opportunities. Many Shia live in villages and poorer sections of the capital Manama. A few prominent Shia families have cooperated with Al Khalifa and have been amply rewarded with access to wealth and high government positions, including cabinet posts.

Since March 15, 2011, King Hamad has imposed a state of emergency under the rubric of a “State of National Safety,” which has given the security forces “sweeping powers” to arrest and try protesters in special courts for “offences against the state” with no “explicit human rights safeguards.” Under SNS regulations, hundreds of people have been detained, tortured, and injured. At least 30 protesters have been killed, according to media and international human rights reports. Many others have “disappeared” by agents of the regime in the middle of the night without a word to their families or access to legal defense. More recently two al-Wefaq parliamentarians, Matar Ibrahim Matar and Jawad Fairuz, were arrested by masked armed agents of the regime and whisked away without minimal due process. Their families were not informed of their whereabouts.

Regime repression of protesters and human rights activists—Sunni and Shia—continues unabated. More doctors are being tried in special tribunals for alleged “crimes against the state.” In reality, they were arrested and tried for providing medical help to those injured and beaten by security agents.

Talk of possible dialogue with the opposition, which was first voiced by the Crown Prince and the King’s son Shaykh Salman, has all but evaporated with the advent of at least 1,000 Saudi troops into Bahrain. These troops, including a few from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, came to Bahrain as part of the so-called Desert Shield. They crossed the causeway that connects Bahrain with Saudi Arabia under the Gulf Cooperation Council collective security agreement. The Saudi leadership was extremely distressed by the downfall of Tunisia’s Bin Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak and therefore decided not to spearhead a “counterrevolution” to safeguard the Bahraini and other Sunni Gulf ruling families. The Saudi action reflects Riyadh’s claim that the “Arab Spring” is a threat to internal stability and that Iran was stirring Shia opposition in Bahrain, and potentially in Saudi Arabia.

Three key points underpin the on-going crisis in Bahrain:

• The current protest movement calling for government accountability and reinstatement of the constitution is decades old; in fact, it goes back to 1975 when the ruling family dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the 1973 constitution.
• The movement is not driven by sectarianism. Because the majority of the population is Shia, large numbers of the protesters are therefore Shia. Sunni reformers, however, are also actively involved in opposing regime repression and have been at the forefront of the reform movement.
• The Shia community is diverse politically, socially, and economically and has not voted as a bloc. Nor is the Shia community beholden to Iran. Bahraini Shia over the years have turned to Iraqi and Lebanese Shia Grand Ayatollahs for emulation, and although several prominent Bahraini Shia leaders have studied in Iran, the Shia community does not view Iranian senior clerics as their sources of emulation or marja'.

Bahraini protesters, like their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, are as diverse as the wider Bahraini society. They are villagers, city dwellers, laborers, farmers, professionals, teachers, health providers, and government employees. They seek dignity, justice, respect, and the opportunity to live as free citizens. Many of their postings on the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter reflect their desire to have the freedom to dream for a better life and pursue their dreams without repression or restrictions on their freedoms to speak, to create, to travel, and to associate with others. They also aspire to join the rising Arab generation as a peaceful force of change in their societies.

Contrary to Saudi and Bahraini government claims, calls for reform are not a Shia thing or a recipe for sectarianism. Media reports indicate the sectarianism argument has been pushed by the Saudi and Bahraini leadership in order to justify their actions against Bahraini peaceful protesters. Many Bahrainis view the main goal of the Saudi presence in the country is to persecute the Shia community and silence all opposition voices.

The three key ingredients of the envisioned compromise involve a return to the 1973 constitution, a re-establishment of a popularly elected national Assembly, which the king’s father dissolved in 1975, and dissolving the current government, which has been headed by the king’s uncle, Shaykh Khalifa, since independence in 1971. The prime minister is perhaps the most disliked senior member of Al Khalifa because of perceived corruption, nepotism, and repression, according to academic analysis and media reports. Many Bahrainis also view him as a staunch opponent to reform within the ruling family. The opposition movement maintains that implementing these demands will lead to transparent and accountable government, a just distribution of wealth, recognition of freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press, and an independent judiciary.

The pro-reform demands are in response to economic, political, and social grievances, which many Bahrainis have endured for decades. I have discussed many of these grievances in the first edition of my book, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society, which Lexington Books published in 1976. These grievances, including the same prime minister, continue to exist in the country today.

Emile Nakhleh is the author of Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (Lexington Books, 2011).

A Tale of Two Cities: Hong Kong and Dubai

By Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Celebrating Disappearance/Appearance

Hong Kong and Dubai have more in common than towers wearing architectural brandnames. Being hubs between what has commonly been called the “East” and the “West,” both cities have been submitted to spectacular developments that transformed them within a few decades from fishing villages deprived of any urban history into international metropolises. Both cities possess port locations that are central to trade and both cities have attracted massive international capital as well as large expat communities. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai occupies a central position within its respective region as a producer of goods, but both function as centers of facilitation and are rather para-sites than sites. Dubai is the third most important re-export centre in the world just after Hong Kong and Singapore. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai has transport rivers and, at present, neither city has a significant amount of raw materials. Though the foundation of modern Dubai depended very much on initial oil reserves that are no longer available, it is correct to maintain that both cities owe their present existence to obstacles that forced them to invest in non-traditional economies. Finally, both cities came to symbolize globalization and an extreme form of urbanity based on aggressive international capitalism.

Attracting international investments, but little “culture” (and being deprived of local cultural resources), for a long time, Hong Kong’s entire existence as a city depended on financial markets. Dubai’s existence can be defined in the same terms. As a matter of fact, Dubai has been quite commonly called “the Hong Kong of the Middle East.” Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai are “real” cities in the conventional sense because neither has preserved its historical context.

Hong Kong and the Celebration of Disappearance

In the 1980s, when Hong Kong owned the world’s largest container cargo terminals, the city’s image was that of a cultural desert determined by superficiality, internal fragmentation, consumerism, and the lack of urban history or local identity. Today all this is seen as typical for Dubai. However, a “cultural turn” promoting a local ethos based on a common language and a particular geographical location, seemingly reversed Hong Kong’s cultural situation in the 1980s, creating a film industry focusing on local stories and local people that would become famous as the Hollywood of the East. In popular music, Cantopop has been a local genre since the 1970s. This, together with a belief in typical Hong Kong virtues such as rationality and discipline, would give Hong Kong the cultural identity it needed, which changed the perception of the city. This individualist cultural system was even strong enough to oppose big businesses.

In a way, Hong Kong became a “postmodern” city: Hong Kong is neither “pre-modern” because it does not exhibit a continuous string of histories, traditions, and culture, nor is it “modern” in the sense of de-cultured, or simply functionally economic. Mike Featherstone has called this type of city, which decides to return to culture, style, and decoration, “postmodern” because here cultural elements are most often “decontextualized, simulated, reduplicated and continually renewed and restyled.”

It is for these precise reasons that it is wrong to characterize Hong Kong’s cultural ascendance as a straightforward process of acculturation. Ackbar Abbas describes Hong Kong’s “cultural self-invention” as a device that is linked, in a paradoxical fashion, to a complex concept of “disappearance,” which comprises at least three things: First, “disappearance” addresses Hong Kong’s frantic cycle of construction, demolition, and reconstruction that yields the impression of a constant disappearance of architectural substance. Second, as Hong Kong has been submitted to more and more aggressive and advanced stages of globalization, the newly built Hong Kong architecture remains restricted to that of the brandname kind. This tendency creates a global environment that, once again, threatens to erase the newly achieved local culture and makes the city “invisible” within an international context, letting topical cultural experience disappear into an anonymous international system. This internationalization concerns also the film industry as its productions have been more and more geared towards international (and Mainland-Chinese) markets. The third meaning of disappearance has to do with the “real” disappearance of Hong Kong as it is taken over by China and will presumably, sooner or later, be absorbed into an oversized motherland.

The first two developments are not unique to Hong Kong, but what is unique is the way in which Hong Kong copes with them. As a matter of fact, Abbas links all three developments (which partly overlap and are difficult to disentangle) to the nostalgic experience of the disappearance of colonial space, which created, in his opinion, not simply a space from which “the colonial” has disappeared, but rather a “colonial space of disappearance.” Abbas’ point is that “disappearance” does not lead to disappearance at all, but rather to a sustained “aesthetics of disappearance” creating, in the case of Hong Kong, the particular cultural space of a “floating identity.” Hong Kong cinema, for example, is eager to keep pace with a subject that is always at the point of disappearing.

Dubai and the Colonial Space of Appearance

Hong Kong will not disappear but it has installed its existence within a peculiar aesthetics of disappearance. Abbas actually believes that Hong Kong will remain almost unchanged for another fifty years. The floating state of Hong Kong’s existence makes it a true forerunner of Dubai, which seems to be suspended in a similar state of floating existence, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. Dubai will simply not appear. For this city, the act of becoming has been charged with such complicated connotations that “becoming” seems to have been eternalized. While Hong Kong revels in what is (almost) no longer there, Dubai revels in what is not yet there. While Hong Kong engenders the feeling of a déjà disparu rooted in an irretrievable, colonial ex-past, Dubai installs itself in a perpetual not yet there that speaks to us through the veil of an indiscernible ex-future.

Dubai has been financed by colossal debt from international banks and its neighbor Abu Dhabi, but “Dubai as an event” has from the beginning been staged as a spectacular and eternally postponed “not yet there.” Apartments were sold long before they were built and would change their owners five times. While in Hong Kong, property speculation causes the absurd state of affairs that sooner or later any building, no matter how new or monumental it is, will vanish from the map, in Dubai maps have been written in the future tense from the beginning. We assist in the creation of Borges’ map that covers the earth because the map is supposed to be the earth. At the airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi expensive color catalogues of the most famous architectural attractions are handed to tourists for free though a large part of the buildings presented in these catalogues do not yet exist. They are scheduled for the (sometimes very distant) future. The only positive impression that these pictures yield is that of a déjà vu of a not yet there.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is assistant professor of philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait and the author of Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-Wai (2007), Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan: A Comparative Philosophical Study (2009), and The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (2010).

Anti-Nuclear, Anti-American: Is a Pan-Asianist Japan on the Rise Again?

By Christopher W. A. Szpilman

Pan-Asianism crops up in most unexpected places. Take the case of one Hiroshi Takashi. Hirose (b. 1943), a self-styled expert on nuclear energy, is a best-selling if controversial Japanese author. Since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, if not earlier, he has been crowing on about a looming nuclear catastrophe and, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, he has emerged as a leading critic of Japan’s nuclear energy program. Although I agree with Hirose that nuclear power is replete with danger, I must note that his premises are largely false and his reasoning fallacious. But my goal here is not to dwell on the content of the anti-Western and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories Hirose propounds. I merely want to note that he can be legitimately described as a pan-Asianist. I realized this after I read Hirose’s Japan’s Destiny, Asia’s Destiny, published in 2004.

In this book, echoing the views of Japan’s prewar pan-Asianists, Hirose bemoans the moral decay and vulgarity of the United States and deplores what he believes is the slavish dependence of the Japanese establishment on America. Noting that America has fallen into moral decrepitude, is “spiritually stagnant,” and weakened politically by its military overstretch throughout the world, Hirose argues that “at long last we, the Japanese, have now a chance to lead Asia independently. No better opportunity than this will ever come our way….We must view Asia as our new paradise” (p. 374).

As Hirose sees it, it is the pernicious American influence that prevented Japan from remaining a genuine Asian country in the first place, because it caused the Japanese to lose empathy with their fellow-Asians. “After the war in Japan,” he says, “the feeling of friendship and solidarity with Asians was largely lost” (p. 382), presumably on account of the shameless deal with the United States by Japan’s leaders who swapped their (and Japan’s) Asian soul in exchange for material prosperity.

The conclusion is obvious. The long-lost empathy with their fellow-Asians can be regained, says Hirose, only if Japan “renounces its alliance with the United States.” Only then, he insists, Japan will be able to become the leader of Asia.

Such expressions of solidarity with Asia may come as a surprise when voiced by an anti-nuclear campaigner (for surely the problem of nuclear energy is not only limited to Asia but is of concern to all mankind), but they have much in common both with the views of many idealistic Japanese volunteers working to help the needy in war-afflicted Asian countries and, on the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, with the views of Ishihara Shintarô, a populist politician whose Pan-Asianist views we document in our Pan-Asianism: a Documentary History. Hirose’s case provides further evidence for the great relevance of Pan-Asianism to understanding modern Japan and Asia.

Christopher W. A. Szpilman is professor of modern Japanese history and international relations at Kyushu Sangyo University, Fukuoka. He is the co-editor of Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Volumes 1 and 2.

Ending the Benign Neglect Myth: President Obama's Trip to Brazil

By Britta H. Crandall

President Obama will make a historic visit to Brazil this month where he is slated to meet with his newly elected Brazilian counterpart, President Dilma Rousseff. The White House described Obama’s visit to Brazil as a chance to “advance our efforts to work as equal partners” to address the challenges facing Latin America. Brazil is becoming an equal partner indeed. Its economy is the world’s seventh largest; it is a global leader in the export of iron, soy, orange juice, and aircraft; and the 2007 discovery of an estimated eight to twelve billion barrels of light crude oil off its coast poise it to become a leading oil exporter. Further, the country has clearly made the successful transition from a military regime to a vibrant democracy. The choice of Brazil for Obama’s Latin America trip undoubtedly reflects the ascent of the South American giant. And for some, Obama’s visit potentially represents a long-overdue interest in Brazil on behalf of the U.S. government.

The United States has long been accused of adopting a policy of “benign neglect” toward Brazil. In recent decades, for example, the White House has not cooperated with Brazil at high levels as it did during World War II and has not meddled in Brazilian domestic affairs as it did in the 1960s. Many U.S. policymakers and the public alike seemingly have very little concept of U.S. policy toward Brazil. One previous State Department official even referred to Brazil as the “black hole” of U.S. foreign diplomacy given its size and significance in relation to the low degree of engagement and attention that emanate from the U.S. government. The White House, as opposed to the Palacio do Planalto in Brasilia, is commonly blamed for this lack of high-level cooperation between the two governments.

However, bilateral engagement is a two-way street. It takes two to tango, or in this case, samba. Rather than benign neglect from Washington, it is a lack of common interests that limit U.S. engagement with Brazil. Up until the 21st century, with only a few exceptions, Brazil was not strong, problematic, or threatening enough to bring its own issues to the table aside from a steady quest for increased economic aid, and it did not have the relative power to serve as an effective military or economic partner for the United States. Brazil’s foreign policy tradition emphasizing economic development and national sovereignty further limited the potential areas for engagement with Washington.

However, the erosion of the power gap between the United States and Brazil begun in earnest in the 21st century is beginning to have dramatic effects on the bilateral relationship. The less-asymmetrical relationship means that the two countries’ range of policy concerns is beginning to see increased overlap. Brazil’s role as an energy supplier will mean more engagement with the Obama administration as it embarks on a new energy policy. Brazil has become a global leader in the areas of international environmental protection and international trade. Moreover, as the United States addresses its diminished influence in Latin America, the growing importance of Brazil’s role as a moderate voice in the region will also mean ongoing engagement with Washington.

The simple yet powerful role of Brazilian interest in U.S. ties should not be overlooked. President Rousseff’s greater willingness to engage the United States opens up a world of opportunities for bilateral cooperation. President Obama’s trip, then, represents a new opportunity for the United States not because of a long overdue U.S. interest in Brazil, but because of the new openness and pragmatism of the Brazilian government, fostered by the rise of Brazil’s economic and geopolitical prowess.

Britta H. Crandall is adjunct professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies and the author of Hemispheric Giants: The Misunderstood History of U.S.-Brazilian Relations (Rowman & Littlefield 2011).

World Heritage Sites: Places of Conflict, or of Peace?

By Michael A. Di Giovine

UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, particularly those in hotspots of geopolitical conflict, have been in the news this past month. The Wall Street Journal published a photo essay on some of the most recently designated sites. And while the Palestinian Authority reportedly has nominated Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity—believed to be Jesus’ birthplace—to the prestigious World Heritage List, Cambodians and Thais have engaged in bloody shootouts that have left nearly 10 dead over the remote Khmer temple of Preah Vihear. What are these sites and why do they captivate the imaginations, and ideologies, of so many people?

Ratified in 1972, the World Heritage Convention designates local places of historical, cultural, or artistic interest as “universal heritage.” In The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism, I argue that this is not empty political maneuvering, but rather a way to foster “peace in the minds of men”, as the Preamble to UNESCO’s Constitution urges, by creating a vast heritage-scape that is bound together by these places of universal significance. Mixing such different sites together, the heritage-scape makes it clear that what unifies all of us is our diversity.

Why do countries agree to “give up” their locality to the universality of the heritage-scape, and adopt the costly regulations UNESCO imposes? Contrary to public belief, a designation does not win the country funding—which is disbursed on a case-by-case basis for training. Rather, these countries respond to the prestige factor associated with site designation.

Just being on the List not only adds value to a nation-state (“we have one of the most important places in the world!”), but allows some of the smallest countries to be counted with the big ones, equating lesser-known monuments like Preah Vihear with popular places such as Venice and Angkor Wat. Without discounting any of the good intensions on the part of the Palestinian Authority, this certainly is a motivating factor: getting on the list means sitting at the same table as other countries; it is one step closer to being recognized as a legitimate state. The fact that Palestine has chosen a (non-Muslim) site important to many Westerners to represent itself on the global stage is therefore no accident; rather, it is a way of claiming to share in Western heritage, and to be its ally rather than its enemy.

While Palestine is betting on a site that is not fully considered “Palestinian” by its people, most World Heritage sites are deeply rooted in the culture and ideology of a nation-state. Many, like Preah Vihear, are claimed by multiple countries. A 9th-century monastery straddling a long-contested portion of the Thai-Cambodian border (its main structure is in Cambodia, but it’s only accessible through Thailand), Preah Vihear was designated for Cambodia in 2008 after a deal was brokered between the now-deposed Thai government of Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodia’s Hun Sen. The Thai opposition party immediately stoked intense local feelings for Preah Vihear, setting in motion a series of uprisings and coups that toppled Shinawatra’s government and continues to this day.

UNESCO could have handled the situation differently by not attributing an “owner” country to Preah Vihear (like Jerusalem), or, better, by requiring both countries to share the temple (there are already several so-called “transnational sites”). The latter would have the added value of diplomatically illustrating UNESCO’s peacemaking claims of “unity in diversity.” Provided it joins the World Heritage Convention, the Palestinian Authority’s request can provide UNESCO with a second chance to truly foster peace diplomatically; let’s hope the Church of the Nativity fares better than Preah Vihear—it has unfortunately seen enough combat already.

Michael A. Di Giovine is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago, a former tour operator, and the author of The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism. He is currently researching heritage, pilgrimage and cultural revitalization associated with the cult of Catholic saint and stigmatic, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

Katyn - Step-by-Step Gradualism

By Joanna A. Gorska

Katyń is one of the most notorious issues in Polish history and Polish-Russian relations. The incident involved the execution of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet NKVD at Katyń and other camps in 1940. Russian authorities have repeatedly refused to recognize those killed at Katyń as victims of political reprisals and to rehabilitate them. In March 2005, the Russian investigation was officially closed, with no one charged, and without identifying the Katyń massacre as genocide or a war crime. As expected, the inconclusiveness of the Russian inquiry and its failure to establish a chain of responsibility provoked a public outcry in Poland.

A potentially new chapter in Polish-Russian relations on Katyń opened in April 2010 with the tragic plane crash that took the lives of Poland’s top officials, including President Lech Kaczyński, who were travelling to Smolensk to attend Katyń commemoration ceremonies. Russia’s quick response to the accident, particularly its involvement in an investigation into the plane crash and the support that it offered to relatives of those killed, appeared to have provided a new impetus for the bilateral dialogue on the events of 1940. The plane crash raised the visibility of the Katyń massacre in the Russian media and within Russian society. More broadly, on the policy front, Russian authorities showed growing willingness to accommodate Poland’s preferences on Katyń. For example, the Russian Supreme Court ordered the Moscow City Court to consider an appeal by the Polish group Memoriał to declassify the decision of Russian military prosecutors to close the Katyń investigation. Russian officials also agreed to release additional documents pertaining to the Katyń killings, which were handed over to the acting Polish president, Bronisław Komorowski, in May 2010. Significantly, in late November 2010, Russia’s State Duma proposed a resolution to recognize the events of Katyń as a crime of the Stalinist regime.

However, this shift in Russia’s policy on Katyń will likely be limited in scope. On the strategic policy level, Russian authorities are likely to continue the policy of opposing the equation of the Katyń killings with genocide or war crimes and refusing to grant compensation for crimes committed by the Soviet Union. Indeed, in a note submitted to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, which is considering a claim from relatives of the Katyń victims, Russian authorities have argued that they are under no duty to explain the ‘Katyń events.’ Likewise, the Polish authorities are unlikely to deviate from the established policy course on Katyń, which aims at concluding the investigation, obtaining financial compensation for the wrongs suffered from the Soviet Union, and commemorating those killed by the NKVD. The persisting conflict of primary objectives between Poland and Russia on Katyń and the countries’ limited willingness to make substantial policy adjustments on the issue will allow only for incremental and limited changes. Indeed, as President Komorowski stated with reference to Katyń in the run-up to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Poland in December 2010: "This issue requires considerable effort and a consistent policy aimed not only at reconciliation but also setting some conditions, which would make this reconciliation and cooperation credible."

Joanna A. Gorska currently works for London-based risk management consultancy Control Risks, previously taught at Oxford University, held research positions at NATO Parliamentary Assembly as well as the European Commission, and is the author of Dealing with a Juggernaut: Analyzing Poland's Policy toward Russia, 1989-2009.