Critique internationale - Content
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[Grassroots Patriotism: Reconstructing Canada’s National Identity Along the “Highway of Heroes”]
This essay examines Canada’s “Highway of Heroes” as a citizen-oriented patriotism in response to Canada’s war in Afghanistan. The paper advances the idea of the “Highway of Heroes” phenomenon as a “grassroots patriotism” where upon representations of the Canadian nation are performed and contested by citizens themselves. The central argument forwarded is that the “Highway of Heroes” represents a departure from – and challenge to – official state discourses of patriotism that have dominated Canada outside Québec over the last half a century, which includes a patriotic narrative of Canada’s military efforts and war heroes. Importantly, this version of patriotism has been more recently embraced by the Canadian state, thus demonstrating how grassroots patriotisms can influence and shape official state narratives of patriotism.
[Conscription and Patriotism: The Case of the Turkish Army]
The patriotic socialization of conscripts within the army takes two overlapping forms: theoretical and practical. “Training in love for one’s country” takes place smoothly through the repetition of patriotic norms. It defines from above the contours of a collective identity, whether patriotic, national or state. This identity is in keeping with the nationalism of Ataturk and contains a law and order component that is organized around the paradigm of dangers and threats. Yet, while this theoretical training in love for one’s country seeks to federate the population, practical training by way of internal war shatters this consensus by creating group solidarities that divide the population. In Turkey, learning patriotism thus consists of two aspects which, while mutually reinforcing one another, have contradictory effects
[Being a Patriot in Post-Soviet Russia]
Multiple forms of patriotic affection are expressed in the space of “dispute” represented by the Russian blogosphere. To the degree that it can be taken as a privileged point for observing the evolution of the relationship between governors and governed in present day Russia, the coexistence there of arguments describing love of country as either impossible or imperative raises two central questions: what is the basis of resistance to “patriotism from above” and how is a “patriotism from below” pieced together? Particular attention is here given to traits that run counter to the cliché of a fusion between state and society: the domestic-intimist expression of patriotic feelings and their ego-centric dimension, which together outline a new sovereign subject and are evidence of a shifting political culture. As the protests against electoral fraud in winter 2011-12 showed, the latter has in particular expressed itself via the emergence of a critical patriotism.
[A Convoluted Trajectory: Patriotism and Traditional Festivals in Reform Era China]
On December 7th, 2007, the Chinese government decided to place traditional festivals on the national calendar. This event, which can be considered a textbook example of “inventing tradition”, reinforced the position of those who believe that the Communist Party uses the past in the service of an aggressive foreign policy and to reinforce national unity, which has been jeopardized by the disappearance of socialist ideology. Yet “genealogical” analysis of the decision process reveals that a phenomenon of convergence of interests and representations was at work, bringing together various milieu: Hong Kong deputies, intellectuals, economists, folklorists and businessmen. It also shows the obstacles – among others, managing the flows brought about by an increased number of holidays in such a heavily populated country – that the government encountered before ratifying the proposal. Yet China is now also a society of leisure. Proof of this can be found in the popular enthusiasm with which the government’s initiative was greeted, especially among the urban middle class, who can now profit from new vacation periods.
[The Transformations of French Nuclear Export Policy (1974-1976): A Triple Double Game]
A number of problems present themselves for any scholar seeking to take into account all determinations relating to “national” and “international” action in the analysis of foreign policy. In the domain of the French diplomatic practices of the mid-1970s – structured around the apparent issue of nuclear exports – archival consultation and interviews reveal that the various actors involved in this policy were not necessarily playing the same national and international “double game”. While relations between states shape what they are and do, the various effects of refraction at work at the internal level prevents one from speaking of a state taken uniformly across a space of competition.
[The Transitional Justice Process in Columbia]
Even though the conflict is ongoing and despite the very limited success of its military offensive against the guerillas and its efforts to demobilize illegal armed groups, the Columbian government has since 2005 implemented measures of transitional justice. In this respect, the Columbian case runs counter to the idea according to which such measures can only take place in the context of the transition from war to peace or authoritarianism to democracy. The government sees this form of justice as a way of advancing towards peace, victim compensation and the reconciliation of Columbian society while simultaneously maintaining pressure on the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), the ELN (National Liberation Army) and the new criminal groups that have emerged from old paramilitary structures. The application of the transitional justice process, which is based on two landmark laws (Law 975 of 2005, known as the “Justice and Peace” law, and Law 1448 of 2011, known as the “Law on Victims and the Return of Land”), nevertheless runs up against two major handicaps: the country’s democratic immaturity and the persistence of criminality.
[A Difficult Entry into Politics: The Samoobrona Movement in Post-Communist Poland]
Examining the participation of the leaders of the Samoobrona agricultural union in the 1993 Polish legislative elections allows one to consider the manner in which the electoral arena has been occupied by “newcomers” drawn from outside of the established political forces. While the rules governing competition have yet to be fully determined, these unions, which have more experience of peasant demonstrations than of electoral jousting, have devoted themselves to developing and promoting a dynamic and original platform. Far from being reducible to its strategic dimension alone, theirs is an apparently ad hoc effort aiming to reconcile the electoral constraints on candidates with the willfully atypical nature of their stance. However, this double game of adaptation and demarcation has proven to be particularly tricky for actors largely deprived of the resources that are becoming dominant in Post-Communist Poland. Struggling to control the dynamic of their campaign, the leaders of Samoobrona have ultimately found themselves incapable of redefining relations of representation in their favor and transforming their small group into a lasting political enterprise.
Armina Galijas Eine bosnische Stadt im Zeichen des Krieges : Ethnopolitik und Alltag in Banja Luka (1990-1995), Munich, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011, 352 pages.
Sébastien Chauvin, Les agences de la précarité : journaliers à Chicago, Paris, Le Seuil, 2010, 339 pages.
Dennis D. Cordell, Gregory H. Maddox (eds), The Demographics of Empire: The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge de Karl Ittmann, Athens, Ohio University Press, 2010, IX-292 pages.
Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation, Princeton/Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2010, XI-314 pages.
Mikael Rask Madsen, La genèse de l’Europe des droits de l’homme : enjeux juridiques et stratégies d’État (France, Grande-Bretagne et pays scandinaves, 1945-1970), Strasbourg, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2010, 333 pages.
Andrew J. Diamond, Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City 1908-1969, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009, XIII-396 page
Nathalie Duclos (dir.), L’adieu aux armes ? Parcours d’anciens combattants,Paris, Karthala, 2010, 423 pages.
