The post-politics of public-private security governance: An ideology critique of the complaints about Facebook

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Jeppe T. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Ideology Critique ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
History Of

AbstractHow do public protests emerge and become impotent? Inspired by Žižek's ideology critique, the article examines the ideological underpinnings of contemporary public-private security governance and suggests that worried, complaining subjects are a product of a dominant discourse of expert knowledge and technification. It then introduces three Žižekian dynamics that prevent protests from challenging the prevailing discourse – particularisation, ultra-politics, and cynicism – and illustrates these dynamic through a case study of the history of public complaints about Facebook. The article suggests that Facebook communicates through a discourse of technification whereby it constantly invents technological fixes unable to satisfy the complaints. The article further suggests that Facebook turning into a national security partner in the fight against terrorism online prevents complaints from becoming universalised by rendering even particularised privacy contestations illegitimate. This is reinforced, the article argues, by the subject's cynical enjoyment; that is, the ‘letting off steam’ on Facebook while criticising it.

Knowing Individuals: Fingerprinting, Policing, and the Limits of Professionalization in 1920s Beijing

Modern China ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-192
Author(s):  
Daniel Asen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Police Academy ◽  
Global History ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Identification Practices ◽  
Shed Light

This article examines the adoption of modern fingerprinting in early twentieth-century China through a case study of the Fingerprint Society, an association affiliated with the Ministry of Interior’s police academy that was active in 1920s Beijing. The members of this association viewed fingerprinting as both a technique that could be used to demonstrate China’s adoption of globally accepted standards of policing and justice and a body of academic knowledge that could form the basis for a would-be profession of fingerprinting experts. While the Fingerprint Society ultimately failed to accomplish its profession-building goals, its activities nonetheless shed light on an early moment in the history of new identification practices in China as well as on dynamics that have shaped the global history of fingerprinting as an area of modern expert knowledge located ambiguously between policing and science.

scholarly journals Peaceful Thai, Violent Malay(-Muslim): A Case Study of the “Problematic” Muslim citizens of Southern Thailand

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saroja Dorairajoo
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Southern Thailand ◽  
History Of

This paper tries to understand why the Malay-speaking Muslims of southern Thailand are viewed perpetual national security threats by looking at some deep-seated identity constructions that aligns Malay identity with violence and Thai identity with peace and patriotism. By insisting that southern Thai Malay-Muslims identify as Thai rather than as Malay, the Thai state and its Buddhist citizens view Malay-Muslims insistence on their Malay identity as not only a rejection of Thai-ness but also as a threat to the sovereignty of the Thai nation-state. By comparing the Thai-Malays with the Thai-Chinese, the most discriminated minority in the history of Thailand, the author argues that forging of economic links within and outside of Thailand has helped the Thai-Chinese attain both political and economic success in Thailand while the promotion of separatist identities such as Malay and Islam have bequeathed the Thai-Malays with a legacy of violence.

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

A Case Study on the Process of Creating Interests in History of History-Deokhu

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Young-Seok Seo ◽  
Bong-Seok Kim
Keyword(s):  
History Of
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