Northeast Asia and the World-System
Abstract There is a significant difference between politics and geo-politics. Politics is about the existential present. Geopolitics is about the structural constraints that govern, over a medium run, the interplay of the longer-term political and economic interests of the major players in the world system. Geopolitical trends are not found in the headlines. Indeed they are largely hidden from the view of the political actors. The geopolitics of the world system nonetheless shapes the short-term actions of political agents, quite often without them even being aware of it. The single most important geopolitical change at the moment is the precipitate decline of the world-systemic power of the United States. The world-system has moved from a situation of creeping multipolarity to one of undisguised multipolarity. If we are to imagine them as a singular locus of geopolitical power in the coming decades the first question that is posed is whether or not there will be some sort of reunification of the two Chin...
Constructing Regional Interests in Japan and China
An earlier version of this article was presented at the International Studies Association’s annual meeting in Portland, OR, on March 1, 2003, and at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia on August 28, 2003. Saori N. Katada is an associate professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. The Japanese Economy, vol. 31, nos. 3–4, Fall 2003/Winter 2003–4, pp. 126–150. © 2004 M. E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1097–203X / 2004 $9.50 + 0.00.
“To those who choose to follow in our footsteps”: making women/LGBT+ soldiers (in)visible through feminist “her-story” theater
Building on Judith Butler ’ s understanding of visibility as “ the object of continuous regulation and contestation, ” art/aesthetics studies in international relations, and feminist theater studies, we identify feminist “ her-story ” theater as a unique site where Western “ gender-/sexuality-inclusive ” soldiering is visibilized, contested, and subverted. Drawing on ethnographic observations of two award-winning dramas, interviews with artists and military hosts, and ﬁ ndings from a wider research project on contemporary British military culture, we reveal the key role of heteronormative and patriarchal cultural discourses in reproducing the ambivalent positionalities of women/LGBT+ soldiers. We argue that the very visibility of women/LGBT+ soldiers on the stage paradoxically operates to make the complexities of – and struggles against – masculinized heteronormative military cultures invisible. Furthermore, despite artists ’ attempts to dissociate empowerment through soldiering from the problematic context of modern con ﬂ icts, “ her-story ” theater ultimately entrenches gendered/racialized hierarchies that normalize Western military interventions. We conclude that only through sustained feminist re ﬂ ection on the contours of “ imagined ” futures of female/ LGBT+ soldiering can this persistently problematic (in)visibility be productively disrupted.