An anthropology of international relations -- The culture of cultures -- Coolness and magic bullets : studying Chinese to manage risk and constitute a self -- Conjuring commensurability and particularity : reconfiguring local and global -- Imagining the state : constitutions and conceptions of government and governance -- Rethinking "free" speech : debates over academic independence -- The sites and struggles of global belonging
This article offers an ethnographic examination of representations and perceptions of the Chinese state as manifest through Confucius Institutes in the United States. Confucius Institutes are Chinese language and culture programs that are funded and staffed by the Chinese government. Confucius Institutes are a constituent part of China's soft power policy efforts to communicate to the world that its cultural tradition stresses harmony and that its rise to power will be a peaceful and globally responsible process. Through analyzing parent and student perceptions of "the state" through their experiences with Confucius Institute teachers and pedagogical materials, it is possible to contextualize and problematize the means through which Cold War rhetoric is recast and recirculated in the contemporary "post‐Cold War" historical moment, thus interrogating assumptions about essentialized Chinese difference. This research reveals how understandings of a newly empowered China cast the nation as a threat to U.S. economic and political power in a manner that negates China's soft power efforts, dislocating policy intention and effect. At the same time, this research suggests that as Confucius Institute teachers distance themselves from perceptions of an authoritarian state, parents and students begin to disaggregate perceptions of a monolithic Chinese state in a manner that reinforces the state's soft power goals.
AbstractObjectiveThis study seeks to understand how liberal gun owners configure the rights and responsibilities of ethical gun citizenship in the face of a dominant public narratives that rejects guns as markers of liberal belonging.MethodsThis study employs a qualitative, textual analysis approach to explore the narratives of liberal gun owners participating in online discussions of mass shootings and contentious political elections.ResultsThe results show how liberal gun owners, in these online forums, advocated for an emancipatory democracy that largely prioritized the collective over the individual, demanded an accountable government, and was radical in its insistence on the importance of accessibility and meaningful participation, thus configuring social belonging and commensurability as central to formal citizenship.ConclusionThe results suggest that how one formulates the values of citizenship is linked to how one practices the politics of democracy. Highlighting the greater range of possibilities for the alignment of guns and citizenship may thus offer some hope to the rancor of contemporary partisan politics as liberal gun owners seek to normalize a democracy that brings individual and collective identities and needs into its culture and practice.
Yang Guobin ; Yue Ming-Bao: Introduction : gilded-age memories of the cultural revolution Yang Guobin: Days of old are not puffs of smoke : three hypotheses on collective memories of the cultural revolution Yue Ming-Bao: Nostalgia for the future : cultural revolution memory in two transnational Chinese narratives Chen Xiaomei: "Playing in the dirt" : plays about geologists and memories of the cultural revolution and the Maoist era Davies, David J.: Old Zhiqing photos : nostalgia and the "spirit" of the cultural revolution Hubbert, Jennifer: Revolution is a dinner party : cultural revolution restaurants in contemporary China Bryant, Lei Ouyang: Music, memory, and nostalgia : collective memories of cultural revolution songs in contemporary China
