Neo-Orientalist Gambits in South Asian Global Game in Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden

This study focuses on the great global game of chess of Neoimperialist played in South Asia. It explores that to fetch global capitalist designs, global forces have devised a global Neo-Orientalist game of chess in three perspectives, i.e. economic, cultural and political, for three-level players, i.e. great players, little players and domestic players. The economic ventures urge the need to divide the South Asian Muslims into good and bad categories through neo-orientalist cultural and political gambits, as is revealed from Nadeem Aslam's 'The Blind Man's Garden' (2013) that critiques the hegemony of Neo-imperialist global forces working purely for their global designs in the region. It exposes economic, political, cultural and strategic motives behind two basic goals: the establishment of neo-imperialism through the elimination of borders for neo-liberalist gains by homogenizing world culture; and the eradication of global terrorism for which war has already been launched there.

Challenges to state control of territory: Comparative analysis of Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar

States around the world have lost control over their territory to armed non-state actors, including states like Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar in the Asian region. This article aims to understand why these states are unable to exercise control over all of their territory. The study identifies and examines four major challenges faced by states in maintaining control over their territory – lack of state legitimacy and effectiveness, strategic motives of armed non-state actors, socio-economic motives of armed non-state actors and external intervention. A comparative analysis of the cases of Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar illustrates the wide relevance of these challenges faced by the states with respect to territorial control.

Meeting Planners: Views of Corporate Social Responsibility Practices and Motivations Across Two Continents

Interpretation of, and commitment to, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) differs from country to country, resulting in variances in implementation. It is theorised that these variances originate from organisational and cultural context. There is limited research dedicated to contextual variances of CSR in the meetings industry. As such, the objective of this paper is twofold: first, to understand whether Meeting Planners in America and Western Europe differ in their current and future motives for engaging with CSR. Second, to establish whether the differences in motivation are influenced by their conceptual understanding of CSR or the wider socio-economic and political. The authors analysed over one thousand self-reporting questionnaires from Meeting Planners across the two continents. Results were analysed using un-related t-tests in order to establish if the two groups differ in their underlying motives to engage with CSR. An exploratory factor analysis was used to determine how Meeting Planners conceptualised CSR across the two continents. Results suggests similar strategic motives to engage in CSR. European Meeting Planners identify egoistic motives to engage in CSR. In contrast to America, CSR practice in Europe will change in the future as value-driven motives become prevalent. The paper provides evidence of context as a defining factor in CSR, where ubiquitous constructs of CSR cannot be easily applied to Meeting Planners. The findings demonstrate the incongruent nature of CSR practice. The results advance the application of CSR to Meeting Planner’s practice in both America and Western Europe, re-igniting the definitional debate of CSR within the meetings industry.

‘It's Not Gossip, It's True’: Denunciation and Social Control during the Guatemalan Armed Conflict (1970–85)

Practices of denunciation are at once ubiquitous and marginalised in literature on the Guatemalan armed conflict. Meanwhile, ordinary Guatemalans who spontaneously denounced neighbours, former friends and fellow villagers have largely escaped scrutiny in scholarly work on low-level perpetrators. Departing from untapped confidential documents in the Historical Archive of the National Police, this article provides the first archival study of denunciatory behaviour during the Guatemalan Civil War, specifically at the height of the conflict (1970–85). This contribution reveals both the strategic considerations that spurred state intelligence apparatuses to elicit civilian information as well as the broad range of personal, opportunistic and strategic motives that drove civilians to denounce. The case study questions scholarly consensus on the spontaneous and voluntary character of denunciation by arguing that besides providing novel pathways for opportunistic action, denunciations also opened up new strategies for survival in the face of a civil war that structured available choices.

The psychological antecedents of resistance to humanitarian aid

Victims of natural or humanitarian disasters sometimes resist aid offered to them, resulting in slower recovery among victims, and feelings of rejection among aid offerers. We present two studies conducted in Indonesia that investigated motives for spurning offers of humanitarian aid. Both studies showed that beliefs in developed countries’ conspiracies lead participants to see humanitarian aid as guided by strategic rather than prosocial motives. Perceived strategic motives in turn enhanced aid resistance, whereas perceived prosocial motives decreased resistance. Conspiratorial beliefs and aid resistance were positively predicted by national collective narcissism (Study 1) and intergroup conflict (Study 2). Together, these findings show that humanitarian aid resistance arises from the recipients’ beliefs in malignant intentions of the providers.

Unethical amnesia responds more to instrumental than to hedonic motives

Humans care about morality. Yet, they often engage in actions that contradict their moral self. Unethical amnesia is observed when people do not remember or remember less vividly these actions. This paper explores two reasons why individuals may experience unethical amnesia. Forgetting past unethical behavior may be motivated by purely hedonic or affective reasons, such as the willingness to maintain one’s moral self-image, but also by instrumental or strategic motives, in anticipation of future misbehavior. In a large-scale incentivized online experiment (n= 1,322) using a variant of a mind game, we find that hedonic considerations are not sufficient to motivate the forgetting of past cheating behavior. This is confirmed in a follow-up experiment (n= 1,005) in which recalls are elicited the same day instead of 3 wk apart. However, when unethical amnesia can serve as a justification for a future action, such as deciding on whether to keep undeserved money, motivated forgetting is more likely. Thereby, we show that motivated forgetting occurs as a self-excuse to justify future immoral decisions.

Scientists Among Merchants: Linnaeus’s “Apostles” Aboard Vessels of the Swedish East India Company and the Advancement of Scientific Travels

In its 82 years of existence, the Swedish East India Company, neither large nor powerful with regard to its economic significance, made an impact on the pursuit of scientific knowledge that lasted beyond the 18th-century maritime trade world. As the “apostles” of Carl Linnaeus traveled amidst the sailors and merchants aboard the vessels to Asia, these 18th-century naturalists reified the spirit of scientific research in its most primordial form: to collect as much material as quickly as possible, and, ideally, in a manner characterized by discipline, order, and efficiency. This type of systematized scientific travel developed in the 18th-century East Indian trade was carried over into the Swedish intellectual tradition in the 19th-century polar exploration and the early 20th-century geological-turned-archaeological expeditions in Asia, motivated by “curiosity” instead of “utility”. This was not necessarily by their own choice, but at the constraint of the historical reality that Sweden, following the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, lacked both the means and the motivation to harbor any military or colonial aspirations beyond her sovereign territory. Against the greater geopolitical scheme of things since the Age of Enlightenment, while commercial, political, and strategic motives informed the exploration of distant continents by the European powers, Sweden was forced to rely on a more modest, but certainly no less vigorous, motive — science itself.

Knowledge flows, strategic motives and innovation performance: Insights from Australian and New Zealand investment in Europe

We study the international innovation strategies of Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) firms in the European context, to explain their investment motives, knowledge flows and innovation performance. Our thematic analysis of seven case studies suggests that ANZ investors' motives for innovation in Europe are often both market- and knowledge-seeking and that some are also motivated by diversification and cooperation. While the strategic intent is often for the knowledge to flow in multiple directions among subsidiaries and headquarters (HQ), distance poses challenges to the efficiency of the process. European subsidiaries are often seen as potentially playing a key role in firms' global innovation systems, particularly with regards to radical innovation. However, because of distance and communication bottlenecks (e.g., time zone differences), HQ does not always recognise this potential. We develop a model proposing that HQ–subsidiary trust and strategic motives are moderators in the process of international knowledge connectivity and knowledge creation.

Sufis, Sufism, and Conversion Narratives

Chapter 2 bridges the gradualist with the populist phase of Islamization later in this book. It considers the emotive and mystical dimensions of the infusion and reception of Islam among the Malays. It explains how the Sufis gained Muslim converts through spiritual and cultural means. The Sufis employed wayang kulit (shadow puppet plays), dikir barat (lyrical verse debate), folk tales, religious stories, magic, and other forms of mystical arts as Islamizing tools. We then transition to what Tijana Krstić termed as “Islamic tradition of conversion narratives” found in Malay hikayat texts inspired by Sufi and mystical themes. These narratives are valuable in helping us understand how early Malay Muslims made sense of and sought to explain the significance of their conversion to Islam as a means to persuade the wider society to adopt the new faith. Sufi and mystical themes served another function: they masked underlying pragmatic and strategic motives that prompted Malay elites to accept Islam in the age of the expansion of Islamic empires.