The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography
... However, until recently, this scholarship had not explored how representations of the natural world and attempts to govern it interplay with hierarchical positioning. Yet recent works have highlighted how discourses depicting the physical world can serve as a source of hierarchy: producing boundaries and asymmetric positionalities (Lewis and Wigen 1997;Gruby 2017;Depledge 2018;Wilson Rowe 2018, forthcoming;Beaumont and Wilson Rowe 2022;Paes 2022Paes , 2023. As critical geopolitics has long explored, representations of space can facilitate, hide and ultimately naturalize relations of power. ...
This chapter examines the broader effects of growing efforts to govern the world’s ecosystems. Such ecosystems do not respect sovereign borders; hundreds traverse more than three states and thus require complex international cooperation. This chapter builds upon a research agenda that examines the political and social consequences of these cooperative arrangements anchored in transboundary ecosystems. Taking the cases of the Arctic, the Amazon and Caspian Sea, it shows how these very different cases of ecosystem politics generate similar consequences. Examining ecosystem politics through a hierarchy lens, it shows how the process of scaling and spatializing along the contours of the ecosystem generates three types of interrelated hierarchical dynamic that would otherwise prove unlikely to achieve if were cooperation organized through other means. Taken together, the chapter argues that, with the acceleration of the Anthropocene, governing from (if not for) ecosystems could eventually shape and even transform the international order.
... Лише після ІІ-ої Світової війни аме риканський уряд розпочав роботу над новим районуванням світу. Провідну роль при виконанні цієї роботи відіграли не професійні географи і етнографи, а антропологи та лін гвіс ти [8]. Саме ...
The article presents an analysis of geopolitical regions in Europe as intellectual constructs rather than objective phenomena. It offers an overview of past and present approaches to defining regions of the world and of Europe. The approaches, which scholars employed to define Europe’s outer and inner regional boundaries reveal that geographic regions often reflect geopolitical rationale, which often prevails over objective spatial differentiation of social life. Deconstruction of both past and present approaches to regional representation of Europe shows that there are two alternating intellectual constructs. The first one is a unified (or uniform) Europe with a clear outer boundary. The second one is a model of several Europes (Western, Central (Middle), and/or Eastern). These two alternating representations interchange depending on the current geopolitical situation and may involve various rationales including cultural, religious, economic, or political ones. We stress that a set of imagined geographical boundaries, when becoming a common ground, in their turn appear to be a defining factor for geopolitical events. This is specifically the case for Europe, where a long prevailing idea about “Russian” space, a vague region, which one could define as an area of the Russian imperial claim resulted in spatial limits for the projects of European and Euroatlantic integration over the last thirty years. We believe, that the prevailing way of spatial thinking in the West about this “Russia” region as being beyond Europe contributed to the hardening of the Russian foreign policy and ultimately, to a series of military aggressions, first in Georgia, and then in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has proven that presently the model of many Europes gave way to the one of a single Europe and a clear geopolitical boundary between the free democratic and the non-free authoritarian realms. Therefore, we stress that there is a challenge for Ukraine to position itself within the European region and make this construct an intellectual common ground, especially among western academic and political elites.
... Today academic circles (and not only them) are showing a great interest in studying the problems of the three Central Caucasian countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia) and the five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) within the same context. The vast region represented by these eight states is now called 8 Central Eurasia. [46] The same term is also applied to the same eight countries and Afghanistan. ...
This paper deals with the rethinking of post-Soviet Central Eurasia. In recent years, the term Central Eurasia, which refers to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, has been attracting attention as a distinct geopolitical area. According to the approach, which arises from a Eurasianist conception of the region, drawing mainly on geography, equates Russia with Eurasia, an idea that has become popular and much debated in the post-Soviet period. If we proceed from the fact that the eight countries discussed here form two sub-regions – the Central Caucasus and Central Asia – the larger region, which includes both sub-regions, should be called the Central Caucaso-Asia. The term “Central Caucaso-Asia” reflects a conceptual idea of the interests of strengthening the local countries’ state sovereignty, which, in principle, contradicts the spirit and idea of Russo-centric Eurasianism.
... Very simply, the risk is that non-Scandinavian contexts are "othered", provoking some to argue that PD perpetuates "a euro-centric standpoint considered as the 'norm', with 'the other culture' being a deviation and needing to be accommodated through adaptations of the system" [68, p.1]. We note here briefly that Scandinavia and Europe -like any geographical entity -cannot be spoken of as a singular or unified culture or location [42]. They are themselves heterogeneous sites with multiple socio-cultural values, including in the ways that democratic participation is enacted [36]. ...
Participatory design (PD) often prioritises being vocal and equal as signs of empowerment in enabling social change. But what can such preference inadvertently ignore, like silence and passivity? What relationships might be prevented or put at risk when hierarchies are flattened? This paper examines the subtle and relational power dynamics experienced as various hierarchies that shape multitudinous interactions. We identify hierarchies that embody relationalities such as respect, intimacy, and learning, configured through cultural structures and commitments. We distinguish these plural ‘respectful hierarchies’ to contrast with ‘disempowering hierarchy’ to prevent collapsing vertical power structures. We share discoveries from reflexively attending to unspoken, overshadowed dimensions in a transcultural mentoring program that brought together women in Asia and Australia to support their personal and professional development. In recasting hierarchy, we join with emerging movements to expand PD's intersectionally situated practices that support social change, as part of embracing plurality of worldviews.
... As we have pointed out, the reality of a geographically unifi ed greater Eurasian continent had never really undermined older ideas about its component parts Europe and Asia. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, however, the traditional valorization of Europe and Asia began to be critically scrutinized, with Edward Said and others now rejecting it as a biased and even contrived metageographical discourse that needed to be deconstructed and rethought (Said 1978;Wolff 1994;Todorova 1997;Lewis and Wigen 1997). The emergence of former colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas as dynamic new arenas of development and modernity, moreover, provided a completely novel context for the revalorization of these regions and their patterns of interactions with other parts of the world. ...
... And as has been convincingly shown, Europe itself is a concept borne out of a wish to distinguish Western civilization from the perceived oriental despotism of the East. 73 The process of 'provincializing Europe' involves more than problems with geography. 74 As historians have long recognized, it is also a question of chronologynot so much 'where' is the history of science, but 'when'. ...
The history of science in public discussion is dominated by large-scale narratives of revolution. These locate epistemic violence within specialist communities, obscuring the role of science in environmental destruction and in silencing other ways of engaging with the world. At the same time, the language of revolution has fostered an unrealistic image of science, giving too much prominence to crisis, heroic challenges to authority and the wholescale abandonment of established theory. Revolutionary narratives in history of science were consolidated in the decades around 1900, as the genealogy for an emerging union of science, industry and imperial power. Even when explicitly rejected, they function as ‘ghost narratives’ within teaching and research. Relocating epistemic violence not only involves changing the geography and chronology of established narratives, a project that is well under way. It also requires understanding that revolution is the wrong category of event for communicating science and its history.
... In other words, the dilemma is not Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism but a 'post-continental philosophy [built] on this departure from the continental logic, thus helping to demythologize the idea of continents and put forward decolonized [or/and, I would add, decolonial] conceptions of space, time, subjectivity' (Maldonado-Torres 2006, 3). Therefore, a decolonial political theory does not only change the location but also the geographical (ontological) logic, the metageography (Lewis and Wigen 1997). And I believe that what I call 'thinking from the zone of nonbeing' is a departure from the continental logic that would say 'thinking from the West/non-West'. ...
This article offers to outline a direction for a decolonial political theory based on Aimé Césaire’s and Frantz Fanon’s thoughts. In doing so, I will first discuss some work of comparative political theory that could be associated with an attempt to decolonize political theory. Rather than a systematic critique of these works, this article aims to outline some of their limits from a decolonial perspective, such as their embedment in a continental ontology/logic, and their over-emphasis on methodology that can lead to an instrumental account of politics. In contrast, I will argue for a decolonial existential political theory that grounds its investigation in what Frantz Fanon called ‘the zone of nonbeing’ and that takes politics as first philosophy. To make my point, I will discuss Aimé Césaire’s Letter to Maurice Thorez and Frantz Fanon’s Political Theory of the Damnés.
... As many scholars have rightly pointed out, geo graph i cal concepts have no inherent meaning, but are rather created and sustained or rejected through the practices of human culture. 5 The concept of oceanic basins is itself relatively recent, replacing ancient Western notions of one gigantic encircling sea and more recent conceptions of much smaller navigational basins united by prevailing winds and routes of trade. 6 There is much, then, to recommend skepticism about the coherence of histories laid out over such large and contingent spaces. ...
... In doing this, it accepts the need to draw its own maps' (Morris-Suzuki 2020). Collectively, it interrogates how historical and future relations within Asia (primarily Japan, China, Korea) and between Asia and the West are interpreted and contested at heritage sites throughout Asia and the Pacific, and does so while challenging the national and regional borders which frequently structure areas of scholarly investigation (see also Lewis and Wigen 1997). ...
O processo de reordenamento de poder global apresenta efeitos distintos sobre o Leste Asiático, com a emergência de um novo quadro referencial geopolítico, expresso no termo Indo-Pacífico, que busca suplantar o tradicionalmente concebido Ásia-Pacífico. A pesquisa, de vertente qualitativa e tipo exploratório-analítico, apresenta as origens estruturais da nova visão para a ordem regional, analisando as suas limitações diante do histórico imperativo econômico-securitário do Leste Asiático. Conclui-se que a reconceituação no Indo-Pacífico, que responde à reorganização do cenário regional, promovida por Beijing, continua frágil, pois não se alinha aos fundamentos sociais que caracterizam as Relações Internacionais do Leste Asiático.
Recent endorsements of maritime history as an integral part of world history should be central in any attempt to transverse the academic divides separating the study of “South”, “East” and “Southeast” Asia (AHA Forum. 2006; Buschmann 2005). Nonetheless, envisaging an interconnected maritime Asia that is not subservient to the boundaries of area studies and modern nations, and yet does not descent to the simplistic and overly general, is a formidable challenge. A number of studies have tracked trading diasporas and economic linkages, but the place of the oceans in the cultures of Asia's littoral societies has received much less attention. It may not be difficult to locate the reasons. Although in simple terms, “maritime history” is the history of human interaction with the sea in all its facets (Finamore 2004, p. 1), most Asianists have reached adulthood located within a nation-state with identifiable territorial borders and carry inherent intellectual biases that privilege a land-based perspective.
Carter G. Woodson was one of the most prolific African American scholars of the early 20th century. Born to formerly enslaved parents in New Canton, Virginia, he spent much of his adolescence in blue-collar labor and did not complete high school until his early twenties. His unconventional educational trajectory shaped his critique of mainstream education and its role in perpetuating white supremacy, leading to his seminal concept of miseducation. Woodson's contributions to African American scholarship include founding the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (1915), launching the Journal of Negro History (1916), establishing Negro History Week (1926), and creating the Negro History Bulletin (1937). This study examines Woodson’s foundational role in Africology and Africana Studies by analyzing his concept of the miseducated African alongside similar intellectual frameworks. Additionally, it traces the trajectory of scholarship on Woodson’s contributions to Black history and pedagogy. As an Africological work, this study underscores the intersection of culture, education, and socialization in Western political contexts as central to the liberation of African minds.
A contribution towards a better understanding of the natural history of Singapore based on the collections made by Raffles and his network of collectors, correspondents and others.
In Primate Visions (1898) Donna Haraway postulated the existence of a Simian Orientalism: just like Orientalism pictures Eastern communities as the civilisational ancestors of the Western world, primatology regards primates as living specimens of human genetic and cultural ancestors (Said 232-234; Haraway 10-11). However, this paper aims to prove that there can be further links between Orientalism and speciesism, using as a case study James Cameron’s Avatar franchise.
The purpose of the first instalment is to remark on the holistic nature of Pandora as a planet where the homogenous Natives, the fauna and flora are part of the same religious entity, Eywa. Yet the narrative places ecological values over anti-speciesist ones, by normalising the Na’vi’s domination of non-Na’vi animals, thus hierarchising the fauna of Pandora.
The second instalment attempts to compound this mistake by emphasizing egalitarian bonds with non-Na’vi animals, namely with the whale-like tulkuns. Despite them possessing complex societies and identities, the narrative presents them as willing victims and ostracizes individuals who fight humans. In this way, the non-Na’vi animals of Pandora are denied any agency for resistance.
These failures expose that Orientalism and speciesism biases are inextricably linked: for the Western onlooker, the classification of a subject as Oriental/Eastern transforms them into a primitive being that is closer to animality than humanity, but closer to humanity than other non-human animals. In short, Orientalism implies the creation of a speciesist hierarchy by which the Oriental subject is placed under white humans but over non-human animals.
The article deals with contemporary war history, the aesthetics of resistance, and the politics of affect in the context of the post-Yugoslav space. Looking back at the armed wars of the 1990s, as well as the numerous wars still being waged by other means, it becomes clear that there is still no peace in this exhausted zone of geopolitical discomfort. The politics of (non)belonging to this space has oscillated for decades between conflicting affects, liminal zones, and the (im)possibilities of overcoming the permanent production of war through lasting peace. This ambivalent feeling of (non)belonging has led to various twists and shifts in post-Yugoslav art that have solidarized within the old and new geopolitical zones of discomfort and war(s). Using the post-Yugoslav art-based research of Adela Jušić and Blerta Heziraj, who are now involved with the Antifašistički front žena—AFŽ (Women’s Antifascist Front), as well as a long-durée activist performance by Žene u crnom (Women in Black), the text accordingly points to a common ground of politics and art that uncompromisingly resist the governing (post-)Yugoslav discourses of never-ending wars.
En la historia de evangelización del Japón moderno temprano se ha enfatizado tradicionalmente en una “rápida conversión” basado en el número de bautizos masivos según lo señalan documentos históricos de los misioneros. No obstante, a partir de la década de 1990, se planteó un relativismo cultural en lugar de la generalización del fenómeno. Bajo esta perspectiva se indican distintos grados de comprensión de las doctrinas cristianas según los estratos sociales. Además, se trata de interpretar la historia desde el punto de vista del pueblo ordinario, contrastando con la historia convencional relatada desde el lado de los misioneros y las élites nativas. Así, se ha identificado la pervivencia de distintas tradiciones religiosas, en particular, estrechos vínculos entre la cristiandad japonesa y la escuela de la Verdadera Tierra Pura tanto en la estructura organizativa y el formato de predicación como en los conceptos doctrinales e imágenes devocionales. La teoría de la inculturación se refleja hoy en la propia definición del concepto “kirishitan”, que alude al mundo de creencias propias de Japón, caracterizado por las intersecciones de elementos derivados de diferentes religiones. Ello abre un nuevo debate sobre una “indigenización”[1] dentro de la mundialización católica.
Sosyal bilimlerin genelinde yaygın olan ve uzmanlaşmayı da beraberinde getiren Ortadoğu, Akdeniz, Avrupa, Latin Amerika gibi bölgelendirmeler, farklı açılardan zaman zaman eleştirilir. Sosyal ve kültürel antropoloji, bu bölgelerin çizilmesinde ve onların içeriğini belirleyen kavramsallaştırmalarda etkili olmuştur. Bu nedenle bu makale, tarihten uluslararası ilişkilere kadar geniş bir disiplin ağında yerleşik olan “bölgelendirme geleneğini” bunun yerleşmesinde geniş bir payı olduğu düşünülen sosyal ve kültürel antropolojinin, özellikle 1970’lerden itibaren gelişmesinde de etkili olan kuramsal ve kavramsal eleştirilerden yararlanarak değerlendirmektedir. Bu bağlamda coğrafyanın, on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yüzyıllarda antropoloji içindeki rolü de ele alınmaktadır. Konunun tarihsel ve coğrafi açıdan hayli geniş bir alanı içermesi nedeniyle tartışma zemini, Türkiye ve çevresi bağlamında oluşturulmakta, “Ortadoğu”, “Akdeniz” ve “Avrupa” bölgelendirmelerine odaklamaktadır. Sonuç olarak antropolojideki coğrafi nitelikli görünen bu sınırlandırma ve açıklama çabası, dönemin güncel siyasetiyle örtüşen, bir anlama ve anlatma kaygısıdır. Ancak sabit kavramsallaştırmalar üzerinden bölgelere ilişkin imgelere, stereotiplere ve damgalamalara dönüşebilecek bir eğilim de söz konusudur.
Our pedagogical choices make art history classrooms political spaces of cultural production. Through a global exchange of ideas we consider questions of imbalance between western and non-Western materials and differing art history pedagogies in introductory courses and reveal teaching methods shaped by varied local contexts. Kristen L. Chiem suggests re-routing students to the fundamentals of art historical inquiry rather than to a specific time or region. Abigail L. Dardashti's essay re-configures the global art history course by focusing on artworks that defy the neat West and non-West categories. Radha J. Dalal discusses a curriculum that includes a series of courses on Islamic arts in a global context, which highlight shared visual cultures as an alternative to the traditional perspective. Ellen Kenney discusses the complexities of teaching Islamic art history in a city where the art the author teaches is located. Sadia Pasha Kamran explores the post-1970s Islamization of Pakistan's art history curriculum and stresses the necessity of educators to foreground the syncretic nature of Pakistan's past and the diversity within Islamic art. Nina Murayama presents methods of teaching the global survey to Japanese students within a monocultural setting and stresses that the importance of local narratives in world art courses. There is potential in the interdisciplinary nature of art history and specifically in the way we approach introductory courses that can enable students to become global citizens. To be globally competent is to understand the interconnectedness of our increasingly complex world and to appreciate its diversity precisely the skills that global art history courses, that challenge the canon, can provide. The purpose of these introductory courses, then, is to cultivate students' empathy, so that they can become aware of their assumptions and welcome challenge rather than feeling threatened by difference.
This essay stems from our concern that art historians still conceive of "The" Survey in terms that privilege Western artistic traditions. In this article, we offer an alternative that we designate as the multi-survey model (MSM) or approach. "The survey" becomes "the surveys" that introduce students to Western arts and the art forms of often underrepresented regions. Twenty-one percent of the schools surveyed in our peer review employ similar models, and yet the MSM has yet to attract critical scholarly attention. This essay addresses a void in present scholarship and elaborates upon three main goals of the MSM, all of which help to de-center the survey from Western origins and to challenge the discourse that positions Western art as normative. First, the MSM creates opportunities for students to delve into the particularities of a specific region and its narratives of art, which often exist outside Western art historical discourse. Second, the MSM produces a productive dialogue between the Western survey and the regional surveys of Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, Pacific Cultures, and other regions. Last, students investigate agency of representation, and in particular how the arts of Asia and the Americas are presented in the Western world. The MSM deliberately concedes global coverage in favor of capitalizing upon the strengths of faculty members in small art history departments. The MSM ensures that students engage with a variety of cultural perspectives early in their art history careers and bolsters our efforts to create a more globally aware citizenry at the college level.
Worlds of Byzantium offers a new understanding of what it means to study the history and visual culture of the Byzantine empire during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Arguing that linguistic and cultural frontiers do not always coincide with political ones, it suggests that Byzantine studies should look not only within but also beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and include the history of Christian populations in the Muslim-ruled Middle East and neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Armenia and integrate more closely with Judaic and Islamic studies. With essays by leading scholars in a wide range of fields, it offers a vision of a richly interconnected eastern Mediterranean and Near East that will be of interest to anyone who studies the premodern world.
This paper offers a reflection on the theme of this special issue, how mapmakers deal with uncertainty, from a digital humanities perspective. For modern geohumanities scholars and digital mapmakers working in the field of history, dealing with the dual uncertainties of historical data and historical societies themselves can be a difficult task. How do they deal with these challenges? Do we use similar solutions to deal with uncertainty? Can we learn from the practices of early modern cartographers? And to what extent is (un)certainty itself a fruitful research topic in the geohumanities? To answer these questions, it is important to consider the historical development of the field of geohumanities and why it has learned to adapt to dealing with uncertain or ambiguous knowledge. Practical examples from my own research demonstrate how modern geohumanities scholars are affected by the notion of uncertainty in different ways. These examples are linked to the contributions and questions raised in this special issue. The engagement with early modern cartographers shows how important it is for geohumanities scholars not only to invest in geospatial analysis tasks, but also to become cartographers themselves.
This paper investigates geography textbooks of the 1930s in Türkiye, contending that geographical knowledge played a pivotal role in shaping nationhood within a modernising state. This study's critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the early republican geography textbooks showcases how (1) Türkiye's spatial formation was reimagined in 1930s; (2) defining markers of Turkishness and the Turkish nation were forged through erasures and breakups of minority groups, and (3) the new national identity was “bridged” to the geography of the newly founded Republic. This paper posits that a nation's portrayal of its geography and global positioning is not merely a factual recording, but also a reflection of ideological and political choices. Such portrayals are complete social constructs, inherently influenced by power dynamics and disputes. Beneath the ostensibly impartial depictions of space and spatial relations, invisible power dynamics and assertions underlie the assignments of specific meanings to geographic areas.
The expansion of trade and communication networks has been active since the fifteenth century and has had an undeniable impact on connecting military activity around the world. This fact is visible in the historical record, but has it in the last several decades transformed the historiography of military history? The Boundaries of War offers a discussion on whether the transnational turn in historical scholarship suggests that all warfare is derivative of larger global patterns, or if there are local, regional, or national ‘ways of war’ that differentiate conflict within that certain geographical space, which historians should acknowledge. The authors consider how much military historians should focus on local or idiosyncratic factors to explain their subject matter and whether they should consider global phenomena in their research.
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This paper attempts to analyse Sino-Indian rivalry in the Indian Ocean by focusing on the existing maritime practices in the Oceanic space as a departure point. It is argued that the peculiar nature of maritime interaction as a generator of political practices and the Ocean's ability to transcend these practices allows a non-deterministic yet 'grounded' approach to translating the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean World. To the latter end, the paper focuses on the political practices of China and India, associated with small Island states in the Indian Ocean. It is shown that a complex layering of law-and-order building/contestation animate the maritime competition between China and India in this multiplex region.
This chapter discusses recent theoretical attempts to redefine national philology through a focus on literary multilingualism, by looking at them from the perspective of East-Central European literature, a region “comparative by birth” (Emerson). How, and to what extent, can studies of literary multilingualism function as moves of resistance against the traditional Herderian triad of national language—national identity—national literature? Claims that multilingual literature is subversive per definition need to be interrogated, given that both the monolingualizing impulse of literature and its opening up to the multilingual character of world literature can be traced back to the same source, early German Romanticism. Drawing on Vladimir Biti’s conceptualization of post-imperial literature, particularly on the notion of translatio imperii, it is argued that a number of current developments which scholars of literary multilingualism celebrate as postnational (or postmonolingual) can already be observed in post-imperial East-Central European literature. Vice versa, medievalists remind us that the linguistic is the key to any operation of translatio imperii. If used complementarily, theories of literary multilingualism, post-imperial and world literature can illuminate how the monolingual paradigm in East-Central European literature emerged and how linguistic diversity in individual literary texts was shaped by and responded to the post-imperial condition.
In the extant scholarship, there remains a paucity of research underscoring how Western media frame the identity of Muslim men athletes from diverse backgrounds who challenge the colonial sporting institution (e.g., cricket) with the allegation of racism. There is also a significant lacuna in literature exploring how the identity of a Muslim man athlete is shaped in Eastern media, ensuing his racial accusations against a Western sporting institution. This study aimed to analyze the media's depiction of Azeem Rafiq after his racism allegations against Yorkshire Cricket Club, contrasting British and South Asian perspectives through neo-Orientalism and postcolonial theory within media framing scholarship. We analyzed data through textual and thematic analysis. The study results unearth that while Rafiq was heralded as a voice against racism by the British media, some media outlets focused on the narratives of exoticism, otherness, and the mysterious "Orient" while discussing Rafiq's personality. Further, some Pakistani and Indian media outlets portrayed the Western world as a monolithic entity. The study findings also uncovered that numerous times, the Club's sponsors' responses were framed within financial and administrative narratives, often overshadowing the underlying issue of structural racism.
Part II begins with this first overview chapter. It has five sections. The first section is an introduction to the Korean Wave and how it has been classified by others as it changed over time. The second section includes our suggestion of a slightly different and more continuous classification of ‘regional Hallyu blending into a more global Korean Wave.’ This suggestion is based on the actual history of events, showing four stages. The data show that the Korean Wave was already becoming global, via its first synergies of global ‘simultaneous successes’ by 2018, and the Korean Wave increasingly took a digital world by storm after 2020 due to in-person entertainments being destroyed in many nations’ lockdowns between 2020 and 2023. The remaining sections compare and contrast content and strategies of the ongoing global Americanization that took a war-destroyed world after World War II, and compares it to Chinese ‘inverted’ and ‘negative’ digital power strategies and to the rising ‘positive’ global Korean Wave. Then, different ways that the entertainment industry is conceptualized are examined between the U.S., the U.K., and South Korea. Then, the many different ways people have conceptualized Korean ‘soft power’ is summarized, meaning, the power to move other nations’ hearts and minds to align with another country’s wider goals via others’ appreciation of its cultural forms.
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