Wednesday 15th March 2023, 5.00pm, S0.18.

Professor Conor Gearty (London School of Economics) will be speaking on “Homeland Insecurity: Why anti-terrorism laws are here to stay – and what to do about it”.

Professor Gearty’s seminar will be a joint PAIS/Law event.

Joseph Chan (Distinguished Research Fellow, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan), ‘What is wrong with social inequality (or hierarchy)?’

13 March 2023, 5-7pm, SO.11

All welcome.

EASG Talk with Dr. Marco Milani: Soft power or hard threat? The use of culture and cultural products in inter-Korean relations

Date: Monday, 20th February
Time: 16:15 – 17:30
Venue: FAB4.52, Faculty of Arts Building

In recent years, South Korea has developed an effective soft power strategy through the use of culture and cultural products for enhancing the country’s global influence and status. The so-called ‘Korean Wave’ – Hallyu – has significantly contributed to increase soft power and to support an effort of national re-branding, aimed at providing South Korea with a new set of attributes and characteristics on the international stage. The use of cultural instruments for foreign policy purposes also had consequences for what concerns its relations with North Korea. In particular, inter-Korean relations can be negatively affected in two areas by the development and spread of South Korea’s soft power. First, the circulation of South Korean cultural products in North Korea, which has significantly grown in recent years, could be perceived by the North Korean leadership as a sort of ‘cultural attack’, starting a process of ‘securitization’ of cultural products that can result in an antagonizing dynamic between the two Koreas. Second, the emphasis on specific characteristics of a ‘South Korean identity’ can undermine the process of inter-Korean reconciliation.

Marco Milani is Assistant Professor at the Department of Arts, University of Bologna. Previously, he has been Lecturer at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Korean Studies Institute and Lecturer at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California. He also held teaching positions at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and had been visiting research fellow at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (South Korea) and at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (Netherlands). He has published numerous articles and book chapters on North and South Korea’s foreign policy, contemporary Korean history and inter-Korean relations. He is co-editor of the book on South Korea’s foreign policy titled The Korean Paradox: domestic political divide and foreign policy in South Korea (Routledge, 2019). He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his research tentatively titled, ‘The Evolution of Inter-Korean Cooperation: History, Theory and Practice.’ His research interests include: Korean History and Society, History and International Relations of East Asia, North and South Korean foreign and security policy, Inter-Korean relations, Contemporary Korean cultural production, Media and Communication in Korea and East Asia.

Madeleine Fagan publishes new article in International Political Sociology ’The Paradox of Anthropocene Inaction: Knowledge Production, Mobilization and the Securitization of Social Relations’ (open access)

This article argues that the Anthropocene produces a paradox when thinking about political mobilization. I show how the knowledge production practices that render the Anthropocene visible and actionable, including planetary boundaries, Earth System Science modeling of earth systems, and geological strata, also circulate a security rationality. This rationality is one that attempts to manage, co-opt, or productively direct processes of becoming, which limits possibilities for mobilization. A lens that assumes political mobilization is a function of increased knowledge, understanding, and evidence contributes to this problem. By starting instead with an understanding of possibilities for mobilization as emerging from social relations, the article highlights the way in which the security rationality circulated by Anthropocene knowledge production risks transforming those social relations into security relations. Netting the planet and the human together through the practices of calculation and representation that make the Anthropocene visible produces a decontextualized, disaggregated, and dispersed subject and so limits possibilities for collective political mobilization.

The Revolution Unfulfilled: Brazil's Foreign Policy under Bolsonaro 
With Dawisson Belém Lopes 
Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais 
Visiting Researcher at the Latin America Centre, Oxford University 

When: 15 - 16:30, Monday, 13 February 
Where: R1.04 (Ramphal Building) 
Co-sponsored by PAIS International Relations and Security Cluster (IRS) & Latin America at Warwick Network (LAWN) 

Far-right populist leaders often take office promising a revolution in policies. They project themselves as counterpoints to other political competitors and defend radical positions regarding a set of issues. These contents may include nationalistic–chauvinistic measures, antienvironmental attitudes, conservative postures toward human rights, and religious leaning. According to our framework, though, leaders will only be able to pursue sharp foreign policy changes in pluralistic societies if, first, they win internal disputes at policymaking venues. Second, some policies will depend on external support or, at least, the non-imposition of unsurmountable obstacles. An acute foreign policy change may occur if such “battles” are won—home and abroad. Otherwise, a few incremental and superficial shifts are the maximum outcomes these leaders can get. A within-case study on Bolsonaro's Brazil provides useful evidence for our argument.