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Thinking About the Role of Popular Culture in International Conflicts
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to present a broad yet systematic framework for thinking about the role of popular culture (PC) in international conflict management and resolution, from an International Relations perspective. Protracted conflicts often involve a non-material dimension, as they become central elements in the rival states’ sense of identity, and as societies develop over time strong beliefs about the conflict, which help sustain it over time. Popular culture can play an important role in shaping and changing this non-material dimension of international conflicts. This is largely due to the unique characteristics of PC products that can reach a large number of people, and can convey both information and emotions. Despite this potential, the role of PC in international conflicts has not been systematically analyzed, due to internal divides within the field of IR between positivist and critical understandings of what PC is and how it should be studied, and due to the very interdisciplinary nature of PC and its operation, which leads to many discussions of PC within different disciplines that do not engage each other. The paper examines the multiple roles that PC can play in the context of protracted conflicts. It examines its role domestically within states–societies that live under conflict; the role of PC as a foreign policy tool used by governments vis-à-vis the publics of their rival; the role and limits of PC in challenging conflicts and facilitating transitions to peace; and finally the impact of the joint consumption of global PC by citizens of states in conflict. These different roles of PC are illustrated throughout with examples from different protracted conflict around the world. The goal of this framework is to serve as a focal point for research that transcends the disciplinary divides and allows for fruitful engagement.
... Brits and the occasional diasporic community' (Gray, 2017: 82) commonly occupying centre-stage. Meanwhile in peace studies, scholars are beginning to unpack the relationship between popular culture and the post-war politics of peacebuilding (Bräuchler, 2018;McEvoy-Levy, 2018;Press-Barnathan, 2017). Underpinning this research programme is an assumption that popular culture may inspire a politics of peace in post-war settings. ...
... Peace studies is currently engrossed in a burgeoning 'cultural turn' which seeks to explore the political work that popular culture does in variegated post-war contexts (Bräuchler, 2018;McEvoy-Levy, 2018;Press-Barnathan, 2017). For example, McEvoy-Levy (2018) focuses directly on popular culture and its relationship to peace and peacebuilding. ...
The article explores the burgeoning Nepalese hip-hop scene – commonly known as nep-hop – as a discursive intervention in the post-war politics of Nepal. Its core argument is that nep-hop oftentimes demonstrates an ethos of peacebuilding through popular culture. Indeed, many songs explicitly criticize violence, war, and the political leaders who recently brought the nation to a civil war. Yet, this political critique appears to often fall on deaf ears, due to the fact that nep-hop is commonly decoded as a radically ‘alien’ and ‘vulgar’ genre by audiences in mainstream Nepalese society. Importantly, however, this should not be read as a rejection of the ideological content of nep-hop, but rather as a negative evaluation of the aesthetic form of the genre, which bars many Nepalese citizens from engaging with its political messages in a meaningful manner.
... First, it determines that the "signifying and lived practices of popular culture" (2009,158) are texts that need to be understood as important sites at which politics happens. Subsequent scholarship has recognized this, and it is not unusual to now see work on PCWP published in prestigious IR and political science journals (Fey, Poppe, and Rauch 2016;Furman and Musgrave 2017;Press-Barnathan 2017;Young and Carpenter 2018). The study of popular culture is now considered a legitimate and essential source of inquiry for scholars of IR (Carpenter 2016, 64), whether they be working on security, political economy, or other diverse areas of study (e.g. ...
... The study of popular culture is now considered a legitimate and essential source of inquiry for scholars of IR (Carpenter 2016, 64), whether they be working on security, political economy, or other diverse areas of study (e.g. Griffin 2014; Elias and Roberts 2016;Press-Barnathan 2017). ...
A decade ago, scholars of international relations articulated a research agenda for the study of popular culture and world politics (PCWP), and since then a burgeoning literature has grown in this area. This article critically reflects on the research agenda put forward by Grayson, Davies, and Philpott and explores how recent scholarship has furthered the study of PCWP. In doing so, this article identifies four limitations of current research and suggests that if PCWP scholarship is to remain committed to understanding how power, identities, ideologies, and actions are made commonsense and legitimate, while also problematizing global inequalities and injustices, then it needs to pay greater attention to the analysis of four areas. These are (1) race, colonialism, and intersectionality in PCWP; (2) the impact of digital technology on PCWP; (3) the audience interpretation of PCWP; and (4) practices of making and producing PCWP.
... Thus, , , it is often regarded as a youth subculture, a temporary fashion or fad, forming part of a ritual for young people as they transition to adulthood.Watkins (1998), for example, comments on both the uniqueness and inconspicuous nature of hip hop as a movement for social transformation due to these features. However, within the literature, there is an increasing body of work that explores the contribution of popular culture in Peace and Conflict Studies(Bräuchler 2018;McEvoy-Levy 2018;Press-Barnathan 2017;Lundqvist 2020). Indeed, as part of this discussion ...
... Thus, , , it is often regarded as a youth subculture, a temporary fashion or fad, forming part of a ritual for young people as they transition to adulthood.Watkins (1998), for example, comments on both the uniqueness and inconspicuous nature of hip hop as a movement for social transformation due to these features. However, within the literature, there is an increasing body of work that explores the contribution of popular culture in Peace and Conflict Studies(Bräuchler 2018;McEvoy-Levy 2018;Press-Barnathan 2017;Lundqvist 2020). Indeed, as part of this discussion ...
Artpeace represents a conceptual framing of the synergy between the arts and peacemaking, as well as a methodological strategy for addressing war and political conflict through the arts. Developing the concept of artpeace , this book investigates how local art projects in seven locations across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America have played a role in broader national peace projects..
... Nye expanded and diversified the sources contributing to soft power, encompassing foreign immigrants, international students, tourists, Nobel Prize winners, life expectancy, foreign aid, and spending on public diplomacy (Fan, 2008). Other scholars have also identified elements of popular culture, such as movies, books, computer games, and sports, as potential sources of soft power (Press-Barnathan, 2017). The application of the soft power concept has been also broadened to encompass international organizations (Jones, 2010), multilateral/collective soft power (Gallarotti, 2016), transnational movements (Haynes, 2016;Crespo and Gregory, 2020), and even individuals (Nye, 2021). ...
The study of religion and international relations has achieved renewed attention in the last two decades. This study investigates a specific aspect of this field: religious soft power. It focuses on individuals who were affected by religious soft power and develop a typology of courses of action these individuals can take vis-à-vis their home state. I argue that individuals can take three different types of actions: disruptive, reformative, and transnational. Using the cases of the Catholic Church and its followers, ISIS and Sunni believers, and the relations between Israel and the Evangelicals, I assess how these alternative actions are being manifested by different groups of individuals. Lastly, I offer an answer to the question of when individuals would use disruptive action and when will they use reformative one.
... 91 Movies may thus help to sustain protracted conflicts by strengthening self-other dichotomies and identities by providing (selective) information about societies and conflicts, through the use of emotions, (gendered) stereotypes, and narratives. 92 Hence, they constitute potentially very influential forms of banal nationalism 93 that may reach an audience of millions. ...
... Both democracies and dictatorships, from the Global South to the Global North, are interested in improving their soft power in the "battles for hearts and minds" underway worldwide (Nye 2004). Public diplomacy, strategic communications, and popular culture have become crucial tools in conditioning decision-making, not only in foreign policy but also regarding military practices (Press-Barnathan 2016;Mattern 2005;Mor 2006). However, the concept of a battle for legitimacy concerns a more specific kind of struggle in which international legitimation plays a role far beyond the justification for war (Hurrell 2005), the political use of propaganda (Mor 2007) and psychological warfare (Schleifer 2014), the pursuit of prestige (Mercer 2017), or the shaping of grand strategy (Goddard and Krebs 2015). ...
How can we explain the dynamics of nonconventional struggles such as the Gaza flotilla case of May 2010? Most international relations scholars analyze international disputes using a "chess logic," according to which the actors seek to outmaneuver their opponents on the battleground. However, an increasing number of clashes are guided by a "performance logic": although the players interact with one another, their real targets are audiences. The present study aims to bridge this gap, proposing a phenomenological framework for analyzing this particular kind of performative contest over legitimation and delegitimation in contemporary conflicts. It expands upon the idea that current anarchical global politics increasingly lead contending actors to engage in "pure" legitimation struggles-"battles for legitimacy"-seeking to persuade international audiences that they deserve political support. After providing guidelines for the identification of these phenomena, this article presents a model for the methodical examination of their interactive dynamics based on three legitimation functions (appropriateness, consensus, empathy). This model is applied to the flotilla case by mapping the protagonists' framing contests across "legitimation (battle)fields." The findings of this study, which emphasize the strong interplay between normative, political, and emotional mechanisms for empowering (de)legitimation strategies, can contribute to expanding the research program concerning international legitimacy.
... Their second category, popular culture as mirror, comprises work that uses "popular culture as a medium for exploring theoretical concepts, dilemmas of foreign policy, and the like." 5 Such work appears most prominently in classroom applications but includes other spheres, as with Clapton and Shepherd's (2016) arguments that Game of Thrones "subvert[s] both the disciplinary mechanisms that divide up knowledge and the related marginalization of various knowledge claims" in a way that affects 'real-world' arguments" (see also Fishel and Wilcox 2017). A third category, popular culture as data, includes studies that treat popular culture "as evidence about dominant norms, ideas, identities, or beliefs, in a particular state, society, or region," as with Valeriano and Habel's (2016) investigation of enemies in video games (see also Hopf and Allan 2016;Fey, Poppe, and Rauch 2016;Ciutȃ 2015;Press-Barnathan 2016;Gemmill and Nexon 2006). ...
Many researchers assert that popular culture warrants greater attention from international relations scholars. Yet work regarding the effects of popular culture on international relations has so far had a marginal impact. We believe that this gap leads mainstream scholars both to exaggerate the influence of canonical academic sources and to ignore the potentially great influence of popular culture on mass and elite audiences. Drawing on work from other disciplines, including cognitive science and psychology, we propose a theory of how fictional narratives can influence real actors’ behavior. As people read, watch, or otherwise consume fictional narratives, they process those stories as if they were actually witnessing the phenomena those narratives describe, even if those events may be unlikely or impossible. These “synthetic experiences” can change beliefs, reinforce preexisting views, or even displace knowledge gained from other sources for elites as well as mass audiences. Because ideas condition how agents act, we argue that international relations theorists should take seriously how popular culture propagates and shapes ideas about world politics. We demonstrate the plausibility of our theory by examining the influence of the US novelist Tom Clancy on issues such as US relations with the Soviet Union and 9/11.
The whole-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced a massive response in various media and art forms. Memes, cartoons, graphic novels, street art create an interesting war imagery and portray the effect of the war on society and the individual. Our project focuses on the popular songs created during this war, especially those included in music videos. The songs perform various functions; they express emotions ‒ of pain, sorrow, hope; they might be propagandistic calling for action; they might display deeply personal feelings about the lost world of peace; they may help one survive, and they also help one reflect on the impact of the war on the everyday life of the people and the country, in other words, on the current existential crisis. Songs refer to the moral issues and values in human life, and they articulate the pride in national heroes and national culture. In this article, we intend to collect, categorize, and interpret the songs with focus on the war morale songs that are employed in the mobilization efforts and the shaping of public opinion. Although they are of heterogeneous professional quality, our aim is to document the songs brought about by the war as the personal and political response to the events. Our primary interest lies in the hermeneutics of the messages inscribed in the music, lyrics and visuals.
The article examines the generation and deployment of visual narratives in Ukrainian and Russian digital participatory cultures, with a specific focus on internet memes in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It analyzes the form, content, and functions of these memes and highlights their similarity in mobilizing and conveying political messages despite variations in their visual components. The study indicates that Ukrainian memes are used not only to promote political agendas but also serve as trauma coping and collective identity construction mechanisms in times of crisis, helping to promote new war narratives that are engaged in the construction of the self and the other.
Twenty-first century digital technologies and popular visual art have transformed the ways military conflicts are experienced, narrated, and shared. It demonstrates that digital platforms have become arenas for constructing visual narratives that influence public perception and engagement with the conflict. Through a multimodal and visual analysis of over 950 digital artworks shared on Instagram during the first three months of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this study investigates how these artworks form specific visual narratives which contribute to portraying the new wartime reality while also constructing images of the self and the other through heroization, victimization, dehumanization, and other strategies. All these visual narratives jointly represent the complexity of the war reality and form an epistemic understanding of the conflict. This study highlights the important function that popular visual art on digital platforms such as Instagram plays in shaping perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War, particularly in expressing emotions, conveying traumas, and influencing public opinions.
The extraordinary global success of Turkish drama serials is a significant development in contemporary popular culture. This book presents comparative audience data from three different regions to explore its ramifications across the Global South. We learn how this phenomenon has transformed Turkey—a Muslim-majority country—into the world’s second-largest producer of scripted television serials, enticing audiences from all over the world. The book takes an audience-centred approach, investigating the reasons for the allure of Turkish dramas to Arab, Latin American, and Israeli audiences. In tandem, it explores Turkey's changing foreign policy, economic, and trade relationships since the turn of the millennium, which have coincided with the enormous success of the country's television output. It also analyses the role and importance of Turkish dramas as a soft-power tool by scrutinizing how they have influenced viewers' perceptions of Turkey, its people, and its culture. This volume will appeal to those working in various disciplines—from media and communication, international relations, public diplomacy, sociology, and Middle Eastern studies. The material will also be of great relevance to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate students, academics, scholars and researchers.
Cultural boycotts of mega-events often receive high media profile, but their effectiveness remains questioned. This effectiveness is influenced by their ability to generate ontological insecurity within the target state. However, measuring the impact of such threats is challenging in light of the evasive nature of the concept of ontological insecurity. Hence, we advance a new way to operationalize the impact of both hosting and boycotting mega-events on ontological security (OS), using quantitative indicators on the societal level, thus allowing for a more systematic cross-national exploration of the dynamics of OS. We also contribute to the research on cultural sanctions and the politics of mega-events, by offering an empirical assessment of their actual impact on society’s sense of OS. Finally, the paper points to the importance of de-constructing the concept of ‘national’ ontological (in)security and to the possibility that different segments in society may be more or less vulnerable to such threats. Using data from a national-wide survey among Jewish-Israelis in the context of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, we found a positive association between its hosting and OS, a perception of threat to OS to some extent following calls to boycott the event, and differences in these perceptions among various social groups.
The paper explores the political narratives produced in English-language Israeli cookbooks. We examine an understudied, yet central component of everyday international relations, everyday nationalism, and identity contestations as practiced through gastronomy, and highlight the dilemma between the different political uses of popular culture in the context of conflict resolution and resistance. Our argument identifies different narratives represented in what we term Culinary Zionism. One narrative is explicitly political, discusses Israeli cuisine as a foodway, and contributes to creating a space of, and a path for, coexistence and recognition of the Other. A second narrative is found in tourist-orientated cookbooks that offer a supposedly apolitical story of culinary tours in Israel. We problematize the political and normative implications of these narratives by exploring the potential role of these books to open space for dialogue and to increase the familiarity and interest of foreign audiences of Israel and the conflict. We contrast this possibility with their potential to what we term foodwashing, namely the process of using food to symbolically wash over violence and injustices (the violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in this case).
This paper argues that works of popular culture, specifically horror films, offer valuable insights into dominant and critical perceptions of the sources of violence in ongoing armed conflicts—an issue of concern for scholars of International Relations (IR) scholars, which as yet has not received sufficient attention. Accordingly, we present a new approach that IR scholars can utilize in their analysis of works of popular culture, applying it to two recent horror films from Israel/Palestine: Cannon Fodder (2013, dir. Eitan Gafny) and Freak Out (2015, dir. Boaz Armoni). The analysis of these films, combined with a discussion of films dealing with violence from other contexts, reveals how works of popular culture in general, and horror films in particular, can help address the question of whether violence in armed conflicts is perceived as endogenous or exogenous to the groups involved. This can also shed light on specific issues, such as the connection between social representation and violence, the link between the use of military technology and violence, and the blurred boundaries between endogenous and exogenous sources of violence.
The global war on terror (GWOT) is undoubtedly the most recent case where a government authorized ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, a euphemism for torture. In addition to shocking stories and photographs from Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA black site prisons, popular culture assists in the production of torture’s public image and indicates a site of norm contestation. Therefore, the aim of this article is threefold. First, the author shows that Zero Dark Thirty (2012, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) is constitutive for the public image of torture and its meaning-in-use. Second, she argues that the film’s representation of torture works as a popular site of contesting the anti-torture norm. Finally, she reflects on the continuum between popular culture and the politics of torture.
Images play an increasingly important role in global politics but pose significant and so far largely unexplored methodological challenges. Images are different from words. They circulate in ever more complex and rapid ways. I argue that the political significance of images is best understood through an interdisciplinary framework that relies on multiple methods, even if they are at times incompatible. I defend such a pluralist approach as both controversial and essential: controversial because giving up a unitary standard of evidence violates social scientific conventions; essential because such a strategy offers the best opportunity to assess how images work across their construction, content and impact. I counter fears of relativism, arguing that the hubris of indisputable knowledge is more dangerous than a clash of different perspectives. The very combination of incompatible methods makes us constantly aware of our own contingent standpoints, thus increasing the self-reflectiveness required to understand the complexities of visual global politics.
Societies involved in intractable conflicts form conflict-supporting narratives that illuminate and justify their intergroup conflicts. These narratives play an important role in satisfying the basic sociopsychological needs of the involved individuals and collectives. In order to fulfill this role the narratives tend to be biased in favor of the in-group, selective, distorting and simplistic. This article analyzes such narratives that focus on the following major themes: Justification and Threats (of conflict), Delegitimization (of the opponent), Glorification and Victimhood (of the in-group), the in-group's need for Patriotism and Unity, and its Aspiration for Peace. Additionally, the article describes the individual and collective functions of these narratives. It also describes six main methods that are used in the narratives' construction: reliance on supportive sources, marginalization of contradictory information, magnification of supportive themes, fabrication of supportive contents, omission of contradictory contents, and use of framing language. Because conflict-supporting narratives are so functional, the involved societies struggle to support their dominance within their own society as well as in the international community. This article, therefore, presents seven methods that are used by the parties in their intrasocietal struggles - control of access to information, censorship, discrediting of contradicting information, monitoring, punishment, encouragement and rewarding, and closure of archives. Similar methods are used in the international arena struggles. Finally, it describes the process of change from adherence to the conflict-supportive narratives to the construction of new peace-supporting narratives and adherence to them.
In the weeks following the September 11, 2001, tragedy, President George W. Bush gave several addresses to the nation. His rhetoric built on stereotypical words and images already established in more than 20 years of media and popular culture portrayals of Arabs as evil, bloodthirsty, animalistic terrorists. Textual analysis reveals that Bush's speeches, from his public statements on September 11, 2001, to the January 29, 2002, State of the Union address, reflected an identifiable model of enemy image construction that had, and continues to have, important human rights implications for Arab American citizens and noncitizens.
This study examines the role that fan communities in Israel and Palestine play in the transcultural dissemination of Korean popular music, or “K-pop.” Based on in-depth interviews with fans, a survey of K-pop online communities, discourse analysis of online discussions, and participation in K-pop gatherings, this article examines the practice of K-pop, its localization and institutionalization, and its influence on the identities of fans. Special attention is given to the role of K-pop fans as cultural mediators who create necessary bridges between the music industry and local consumers and thus play a decisive role in globalizing cultures. Typically, literature on the globalization of popular culture either utilizes a top-down approach, depicting powerful media industries as making people across the world consume their products, or emphasizes a bottom-up resistance to the imposition of foreign cultures and values. This article suggests that popular culture consumption not only changes the lives of a few individuals but that these individuals may themselves play a decisive role in connecting globalized culture with local fandom.
Many of today’s popular TV programmes are formats that are adapted for local audiences as they travel from country to country. It is an industry that was transformed in the late 1990s by four ‘super-formats’ (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Survivor, Big Brother and Idols) and that is today worth an estimated €3.1 billion per year. This article focuses on the evolution that explains the emergence of these super-formats in the late 1990s. It traces the origins of the trade, uncovers the world’s first deals and identifies the first TV formats that aired in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. It shows that the two key principles of the TV format trade were established by the early 1950s and argues that the TV format trade is an Anglo-American invention because the first format licences of US shows were acquired by British broadcasters. The second part explains those factors that led to the emergence of the super-formats and argues that the truly pivotal decade was the 1990s. This is the time when the forces that unleashed the super-formats gathered speed, when the format trade expanded beyond game shows and embraced emerging genres that have since become the bedrock of the TV industry, when British TV production companies emerged as leading format creators and producers, and when the world’s two format powerhouses formed.
This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and holistic analysis of the socio-psychological dynamics of intractable conflicts. Daniel Bar-Tal’s original conceptual framework is supported by evidence drawn from different disciplines, including empirical data and illustrative case studies. His analysis rests on the premise that intractable conflicts share certain socio-psychological foundations, despite differences in context and other characteristics. He describes a full cycle of intractable conflicts – their outbreak, escalation, and reconciliation through peace building. Bar-Tal’s framework provides a broad theoretical view of the of the socio-psychological repertoire that develops in the course of long-term and violent conflicts, outlines the factors affecting its formation, demonstrates how it is maintained, points out its functions, and describes its consequences. The book also elaborates on the contents, processes, and other factors involved in the peace building process.
This work presents and critically evaluates attempts to theorize and conceptualize public diplomacy within several disciplines, including international relations, strategic studies, diplomatic studies, public relations, and communication. It also examines research methods used to investigate public diplomacy, including models, paradigms, case studies, and comparative analysis. The work identifies promising directions as well as weaknesses and gaps in existing knowledge and methodology and outlines a new research agenda. The presented analysis and examples suggest that only a systematic multidisciplinary effort and close collaboration between researchers and practitioners can lead to a coherent theory of public diplomacy.
The United States cannot defeat al-Qaeda by strength of arms alone. It must also change the terms of debate in the Arab/Muslim world, especially in its radical wing. How can this best be accomplished? What strategy should the United States adopt for what is often called the “war of ideas” against radical Islam?
One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century centred on the demand for the sporting and broader cultural, social, economic and political isolation of South Africa during the apartheid era. The struggle saw apartheid-endorsed South African sports organizations expelled from international bodies beginning in the 1950s, with the South African National Olympic Committee being the only one ever to be expelled from the IOC. The sports boycott was one of the major successes of the international anti-apartheid campaign, yet the existing literature on boycotts is only marginally relevant to cultural (including sports) boycotts. Furthermore, the existing literature dealing with sports boycotts, with its focus on the multilateral politics of Olympic boycotts, is of minimal use in explaining mass activist campaigns such as the anti-apartheid movement. This essay centres on the campaign against the 1981 South African rugby tour of Aotearoa New Zealand to explore the multiple significances of sport in the target (South Africa) and sender (Aotearoa New Zealand) states, and the character of the mass movement to argue that the cultural significance of both sport and the politics of ‘race’ and colonialism are vital to an effective understanding of mass movement supported bilateral cultural boycotts.
This article proposes that in addition to physical security, states also seek ontological security, or security of the self. Ontological security is achieved by routinizing relationships with significant others, and actors therefore become attached to those relationships. Like its physical counterpart, the ontological security motive is a constant. But states may adhere to routines rigidly or reflexively, and variation in attachment style has implications for security-seeking. This article conceptualizes the individual-level need for ontological security, scales it up to states, and applies the ontological security-seeking assumption to the security dilemma. Realists argue that states want to escape security dilemmas but uncertainty prevents them. Ontological security-seeking suggests that states may not want to escape dilemmatic conflict. Because even dangerous routines provide ontological security, rational security-seekers could become attached to conflict. Ontological security-seeking sheds new light on seemingly irrational conflict, and suggests lines of research into the stability of other outcomes in world politics.
In the two decades after World War II, Germans on both sides of the iron curtain fought vehemently over American cultural imports. This book traces how westerns, jeans, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and stars like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley reached adolescents in both Germanies, who eagerly adopted the new styles. It reveals that East and West German authorities deployed gender and racial norms to contain Americanized youth cultures in their own territories and to carry on the ideological Cold War battle with each other. This lively account is based on an impressive array of sources, ranging from films, newspapers, and contemporary sociological studies, to German and U.S. archival materials. It examines diverging responses to American culture in East and West Germany by linking these to changes in social science research, political cultures, state institutions, and international alliance systems. In the first two decades of the Cold War, consumer culture became a way to delineate the boundaries between East and West. The book sheds new light on the legacy of Weimar and National Socialism, on gender and race relations in Europe, and on Americanization and the Cold War.
This lively and informative survey provides a thematic global history of popular culture focusing on the period since the end of the Second World War. A History of Popular Culture explores the rapid diffusion and 'hybridization' of popular culture as the result of three conditions of the world since the end of World War Two: instantaneous communications, widespread consumption in a market-based economy and the visualization of reality. Betts considers the dominance of American entertainment media and habits of consumption, assessing adaptation and negative reactions to this influence. The author surveys a wide range of topics, including: • the emergence and conditions of modern popular culture • the effects of global conflict • the phenomenon and effects of urbanization • the changing demography of the political arena and the work place • the development of contemporary music culture • film, television and visual experience • the growth of sport as a commercial enterprise. Now updated, by Lyz Bly, to include major developments such as blogs and social networks, YouTube.com, and enhanced technologies such as the iPhone, iPod, and iPad as well as the way in which the internet has reshaped the ways we consume media. The book provides an engaging introduction to this pervasive and ever-changing subject.
The first full length hstory of US and Soviet ciemas role in waging the Cold War. 2010 by the University Press of Kansas. All rights reserved.
Using film as a lens though which we can witness the global transformations in politics, economy, culture, and communication, this book analyzes Hollywood's shift in its depictions of China and Tibet. © Jenny George Daccache and Brandon Valeriano, 2012. All rights reserved.
Sport is a relatively neglected sphere among students of political science and international relations. In South Africa, however, its political salience has long been apparent, as it became a lightning rod for opponents of apartheid.1 Several distinctive features made sport a locus of pressure for change. As Rob Nixon observes, modern international sport has a striking capacity to inspire national passions and identities, and thus to facilitate popular mobilization.2 Hence, the campaign to isolate “apartheid sport” elicited a very high level of national and international passion and participation.
The extensive documentation and literature on economic and political anti-apartheid pressures (as presented in the other chapters in this volume) contrasts with the scarce attention paid to cultural boycotts. This paucity is understandable since economic and political issues tend to be more observable and tangible. And because those with economic power often have political power, economic means should, logically, bring about political ends. Culture, on the other hand, is abstract, incorporating a wide variety of elements ranging from the aesthetics of a nation to philosophical ideas. Definitions of culture reflect this breadth.1
The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as 'motives' of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the 'Self' of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium's decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO's (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.
Professor Steele puts forth some bold and intriguing propositions about the vulnerability of powerful nation-states to what he calls 'counter-power.' -Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College Defacing Power investigates how nation-states create self-images in part through aesthetics and how these images can be manipulated to challenge those states' power. Although states have long employed media, such as radio, television, and film, for their own image-making purposes, counterpower agents have also seized upon new telecommunications technologies. Most recently, the Internet has emerged as contested territory where states and other actors wage a battle of words and images. Moving beyond theory, Brent Steele illustrates his provocative argument about the vulnerability of power with examples from recent history: the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive, September 11 and the al-Qaeda communiqués, the atrocities at Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. response to the Asian tsunami of December 2004. He demonstrates how a nation-state-even one as powerful as the United States-comes to feel threatened not only by other nation-states or terrorist organizations but also by unexpected events that challenge its self-constructed image of security. At the same time, Steele shows that as each generation uses available media to create and re-create a national identity, technological innovations allow for the shifting, upheaval, and expansion of the cultural structure of a nation. Brent J. Steele is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.
Politicians and parties are making increase use of popular culture. They make use of its practitioners, its generic conventions, its image and much else. This association with popular culture has provoked much derision, and the suggestion that democracy is being damaged in the process. This article contributes to this debate by illustrating the way in which politics and popular culture have become linked, and by exploring the reasons for this linkage. It then goes on to examine this relationship through two case studies, both drawn from the British Labour Party, which allows to examine in more detail how politics communicates through popular culture. Rather than seeing politics' use of popular culture as either a welcome populism or a dumbing down, the article argues that we need to look more closely and critically at the texts themselves, judging them aesthetically as well as culturally.
The concept of soft power occupies a prominent place in International Relations, foreign policy, and security studies. Primarily developed by Joseph S. Nye, the concept is typically drawn upon to emphasize the more intangible dimensions of power in a field long dominated by overtly material (i.e. military) power. Recently, some scholars have reframed soft power - specifically the key notion of attraction - as a narrative and linguistic process. This literature, however, has downplayed some of the other deep-seated underpinnings of soft power, which this article argues lie in the dynamics of affect. Building upon the International Relations affect and aesthetics literatures, this article develops the concept of soft power as rooted in the political dynamics of emotion and introduces the concept of affective investment. The attraction of soft power stems not only from its cultural influence or narrative construction, but more fundamentally from audiences' affective investments in the images of identity that it produces. The empirical import of these ideas is offered in an analysis of the construction of American attraction in the war on terror.
A unique Israeli national culture-indeed, the very nature of "Israeliness"-remains a matter of debate, a struggle to blend vying memories and backgrounds, ideologies and wills. Identifying popular music as an important site in this wider cultural endeavor, this book focuses on the three major popular music cultures that are proving instrumental in attempts to invent Israeliness: the invented folk song repertoire known as Shirei Eretz Israel; the contemporary, global-cosmopolitan Israeli rock; and the ethnic-oriental musica mizrahit. The result is the first ever comprehensive study of popular music in Israel. Motti Regev, a sociologist, and Edwin Seroussi, an ethnomusicologist, approach their subject from alternative perspectives, producing a truly interdisciplinary, sociocultural account of music as a feature and a force in the shaping of Israeliness. A major ethnographic undertaking, describing and analyzing the particular history, characteristics, and practices of each music culture, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel maps not only the complex field of Israeli popular music but also Israeli culture in general.
Omar Barghouti and Falastine Dwikat reflect on the personal experiences and contributions of activists, artists, and academics in the Palestinian-led BDS movement, a vibrant example of a movement that embraces the dialectic between the individual and the collective, balancing individual responsibility and creativity with collective decision-making and action.
This third and final part of a summary of post-Zionist critique follows the manifestations of new ways of looking at Israeli history and the "other" in film, theater, novels, music, and poetry. Cinema has the greatest potential for influencing the public and has gone further than the other media in challenging traditional views. The author concludes that the cultural products that have seriously transcended the Zionist narrative and its negative portrayal of the Arabs remain outside the Israeli canon and have limited impact, though the groundwork has been laid for what is clearly a growing trend.
Popular culture can be used as a mirror to reflect on how societies think about themselves. Here Star Trek and the recent version of Battlestar Galactica are used to reflect on how America views its own destiny, its relationship to technology and its place in the universe. Space and ‘final frontiers’ are particularly resonant in American culture, and these two television series provide numerous benchmarks by which to contrast the optimistic and outgoing America of the 1960s with the darker and more paranoid America of post-9/11. Can an America that has given up the goal of returning to the moon still claim to own the future, and is the US becoming inward- and backward-looking — a new Middle Kingdom?
Soft power—the ability to achieve desired outcomes through attraction rather than coercion—has become an important part of scholarly thinking and policy practice with respect to world politics. And yet attraction, the core component of soft power, has been largely neglected in scholarly research. Research has been undertaken, policy suggestions offered, and ethical conclusions about soft power drawn all on the basis of implicit and often unacknowledged assumptions about attraction. As I argue here, this is problematic because neither of the most prominent assumptions— attraction as natural and attraction as constructed through persuasive argument—are feasible or logical in the context of world politics. In fact, as I argue, in the context of world politics it makes far more sense to model attraction as a relationship that is constructed through representational force—a nonphysical but nevertheless coercive form of power that is exercised through language. Insofar as attraction is sociolinguistically constructed through representational force, soft power should be not be understood in juxtaposition to hard power but as a continuation of it by different means. This analytic insight in turn demands some practical and normative reformulations about soft power. ————————————————————————
What is the relationship between popular culture and the reliance on risk management as a framework for governance in the emerging security dispositif? Furthermore, how is one to understand the influence of culture and cultural forces in relation to the emerging biometric state and the alleged security imperatives therein? This article contends that the emerging security dispositif, and the associated imaginations and cultural performances that sustain and shape it, are vital to the production of what is referred to here as the `biometric state'. Motivated by an obsession with technologies of risk and practices of risk management, the biometric state is defined by the prevalence of virtual borders and reliance on biometric identifiers such as passports, trusted-traveller programmes and national ID cards, as well as the forms of social sorting that accompany these manoeuvres. Raising the marriage of convenience that connects two related dispositifs of security — geopolitics and biopolitics — the article considers the relationship between their referent objects: the state and everyday life, respectively. More specifically, popular culture integral to sustaining the emerging security dispositif forms the core of the analysis, as the article asserts the constitutive possibilities of popular culture.
Soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A country's soft power rests on its resources of culture, values, and policies. A smart power strategy combines hard and soft power resources. Public diplomacy has a long history as a means of promoting a country's soft power and was essential in winning the cold war. The current struggle against transnational terrorism is a struggle to win hearts and minds, and the current overreliance on hard power alone is not the path to success. Public diplomacy is an important tool in the arsenal of smart power, but smart public diplomacy requires an understanding of the roles of credibility, self-criticism, and civil society in generating soft power.