region:east asia

  • 崔健 一无所有: Nothing to My Name, by Cui Jian - A Decent Chinese Rock Song | East Asia Student
    https://eastasiastudent.net/china/mandarin/cui-jian-nothing-to-my-name

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqMMe7Mw38Q

    Early in my quest to find Mandarin music that I like (I’m a big Led Zeppelin fan), I came across 崔健 and his most famous song 一无所有: “Nothing to My Name” (also known as “I Have Nothing”). I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while.

    The style isn’t completely my cup of tea - it’s a slightly cheesy, classic rock ballad - but it’s a whole lot better than the kind of Mandarin music I tend to hear on the radio here.
    Cultural context

    一无所有 was first performed in 1984, and five years later became an anthem for the student protesters in Tiananmen Square, where 崔健 performed it live. You know rock is doing something right when it gets wrapped up with politics. Now the song is an emblem for the roots of Chinese rock; it set the ball rolling.

    It’s extremely well-known in China (it’s got its own Wikipedia article - 维基百科”) in Chinese and even English). You can listen to or download 一无所有 here (but only from mainland China), and there are numerous versions on YouTube. You can also buy the MP3.
    一无所有 lyrics translation

    I’ve translated the lyrics for 一无所有 into English here purely for explanation. The translation here is for understanding the song in Chinese, not for singing it in English.

    我曾经问个不休 Wǒ céngjīng wèn gè bùxiū I have asked endlessly,

    你何时跟我走 nǐ héshí gēn wǒ zǒu when will you go with me?

    可你却总是笑我,一无所有 Kě nǐ què zǒng shì xiào wǒ, yīwúsuǒyǒu But you always laugh at me, for having nothing to my name.

    我要给你我的追求 Wǒ yào gěi nǐ wǒ de zhuīqiú I want to give you my dreams [goals] ,

    还有我的自由 hái yǒu wǒ de zìyóu and my freedom,

    可你却总是笑我,一无所有 kě nǐ què zǒng shì xiào wǒ, yīwúsuǒyǒu but you always laugh at me, for having nothing.

    噢……你何时跟我走 Ō……nǐ héshí gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! When will you go with me?

    噢……你何时跟我走 Ō……nǐ héshí gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! When will you go with me?

    [drums come in fully]

    脚下这地在走 Jiǎoxià zhè de zài zǒu The ground beneath my feet is moving,

    身边那水在流 shēnbiān nà shuǐ zài liú the water by my side is flowing,

    可你却总是笑我,一无所有 Kě nǐ què zǒng shì xiào wǒ, yīwúsuǒyǒu but you always laugh at me, for having nothing.

    为何你总笑个没够 Wèihé nǐ zǒng xiào gè méi gòu Why is your laughter never enough? [Why does your laughter never end?]

    为何我总要追求 Wèihé wǒ zǒng yào zhuīqiú Why do I always have to chase you?

    难道在你面前 Nándào zài nǐ miànqián Could it be that in front of you

    我永远是一无所有 wǒ yǒngyuǎn shì yīwúsuǒyǒu I forever have nothing to my name.

    噢……你何时跟我走 Ō……nǐ héshí gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! When will you go with me?

    噢……你何时跟我走 Ō……nǐ héshí gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! When will you go with me?

    [instrumental solo]

    告诉你我等了很久 Gàosu nǐ wǒ děngle hěnjiǔ I tell you I’ve waited a long time,

    告诉你我最后的要求 gàosu nǐ wǒ zuìhòu de yāoqiú I give you my final request,

    我要抓起你的双手 wǒ yào zhuā qǐ nǐ de shuāng shǒu I want to take your hands,

    你这就跟我走 nǐ zhè jiù gēn wǒ zǒu and then you’ll go with me.

    这时你的手在颤抖 Zhèshí nǐ de shǒu zài chàndǒu This time your hands are trembling,

    这时你的泪在流 zhèshí nǐ de lèi zài liú this time your tears are flowing.

    莫非你是在告诉我 Mòfēi nǐ shì zài gàosu wǒ Could it be that you’re telling me,

    你爱我一无所有 nǐ ài wǒ yīwúsuǒyǒu you love me with nothing to me name?

    噢……你这就跟我走 Ō……nǐ zhè jiù gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! Now you will go with me!

    噢……你这就跟我走 Ō……nǐ zhè jiù gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! Now you will go with me!

    [instrumental solo]

    噢……你这就跟我走 Ō……nǐ zhè jiù gēn wǒ zǒu Oh! Now you will go with me!

    [repeats final chorus for some time…]

    #Chine #musique #rock #4698

  • Record High #Remittances Sent Globally in #2018

    Remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached a record high in 2018, according to the World Bank’s latest Migration and Development Brief.

    The Bank estimates that officially recorded annual remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $529 billion in 2018, an increase of 9.6 percent over the previous record high of $483 billion in 2017. Global remittances, which include flows to high-income countries, reached $689 billion in 2018, up from $633 billion in 2017.

    Regionally, growth in remittance inflows ranged from almost 7 percent in East Asia and the Pacific to 12 percent in South Asia. The overall increase was driven by a stronger economy and employment situation in the United States and a rebound in outward flows from some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Russian Federation. Excluding China, remittances to low- and middle-income countries ($462 billion) were significantly larger than foreign direct investment flows in 2018 ($344 billion).

    Among countries, the top remittance recipients were India with $79 billion, followed by China ($67 billion), Mexico ($36 billion), the Philippines ($34 billion), and Egypt ($29 billion).

    In 2019, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are expected to reach $550 billion, to become their largest source of external financing.

    The global average cost of sending $200 remained high, at around 7 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database. Reducing remittance costs to 3 percent by 2030 is a global target under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10.7. Remittance costs across many African corridors and small islands in the Pacific remain above 10 percent.

    Banks were the most expensive remittance channels, charging an average fee of 11 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Post offices were the next most expensive, at over 7 percent. Remittance fees tend to include a premium where national post offices have an exclusive partnership with a money transfer operator. This premium was on average 1.5 percent worldwide and as high as 4 percent in some countries in the last quarter of 2018.

    On ways to lower remittance costs, Dilip Ratha, lead author of the Brief and head of KNOMAD, said, “Remittances are on track to become the largest source of external financing in developing countries. The high costs of money transfers reduce the benefits of migration. Renegotiating exclusive partnerships and letting new players operate through national post offices, banks, and telecommunications companies will increase competition and lower remittance prices.”

    The Brief notes that banks’ ongoing de-risking practices, which have involved the closure of the bank accounts of some remittance service providers, are driving up remittance costs.

    The Brief also reports progress toward the SDG target of reducing the recruitment costs paid by migrant workers, which tend to be high, especially for lower-skilled migrants.

    “Millions of low-skilled migrant workers are vulnerable to recruitment malpractices, including exorbitant recruitment costs. We need to boost efforts to create jobs in developing countries and to monitor and reduce recruitment costs paid by these workers,” said Michal Rutkowski, Senior Director of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. The World Bank and the International Labour Organization are collaborating to develop indicators for worker-paid recruitment costs, to support the SDG of promoting safe, orderly, and regular migration.

    Regional Remittance Trends

    Remittances to the East Asia and Pacific region grew almost 7 percent to $143 billion in 2018, faster than the 5 percent growth in 2017. Remittances to the Philippines rose to $34 billion, but growth in remittances was slower due to a drop in private transfers from the GCC countries. Flows to Indonesia increased by 25 percent in 2018, after a muted performance in 2017.

    After posting 22 percent growth in 2017, remittances to Europe and Central Asia grew an estimated 11 percent to $59 billion in 2018. Continued growth in economic activity increased outbound remittances from Poland, Russia, Spain, and the United States, major sources of remittances to the region. Smaller remittance-dependent countries in the region, such as the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, benefited from the sustained rebound of economic activity in Russia. Ukraine, the region’s largest remittance recipient, received a new record of more than $14 billion in 2018, up about 19 percent over 2017. This surge in Ukraine also reflects a revised methodology for estimating incoming remittances, as well as growth in neighboring countries’ demand for migrant workers.

    Remittances flows into Latin America and the Caribbean grew 10 percent to $88 billion in 2018, supported by the strong U.S. economy. Mexico continued to receive the most remittances in the region, posting about $36 billion in 2018, up 11 percent over the previous year. Colombia and Ecuador, which have migrants in Spain, posted 16 percent and 8 percent growth, respectively. Three other countries in the region posted double-digit growth: Guatemala (13 percent) as well as Dominican Republic and Honduras (both 10 percent), reflecting robust outbound remittances from the United States.

    Remittances to the Middle East and North Africa grew 9 percent to $62 billion in 2018. The growth was driven by Egypt’s rapid remittance growth of around 17 percent. Beyond 2018, the growth of remittances to the region is expected to continue, albeit at a slower pace of around 3 percent in 2019 due to moderating growth in the Euro Area.

    Remittances to South Asia grew 12 percent to $131 billion in 2018, outpacing the 6 percent growth in 2017. The upsurge was driven by stronger economic conditions in the United States and a pick-up in oil prices, which had a positive impact on outward remittances from some GCC countries. Remittances grew by more than 14 percent in India, where a flooding disaster in Kerala likely boosted the financial help that migrants sent to families. In Pakistan, remittance growth was moderate (7 percent), due to significant declines in inflows from Saudi Arabia, its largest remittance source. In Bangladesh, remittances showed a brisk uptick in 2018 (15 percent).

    Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa grew almost 10 percent to $46 billion in 2018, supported by strong economic conditions in high-income economies. Looking at remittances as a share of GDP, Comoros has the largest share, followed by the Gambia , Lesotho, Cabo Verde, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria.

    The Migration and Development Brief and the latest migration and remittances data are available at www.knomad.org. Interact with migration experts at http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove

    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/04/08/record-high-remittances-sent-globally-in-2018?cid=ECR_TT_worldbank_EN_EXT
    #remittances #statistiques #chiffres #migrations #diaspora

    #Rapport ici :


    https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/MigrationandDevelopmentBrief_31_0.pdf

    ping @reka

    • Immigrati, boom di rimesse: più di 6 miliardi all’estero. Lo strano caso dei cinesi «spariti»

      Bangladesh, Romania, Filippine: ecco il podio delle rimesse degli immigrati che vivono e lavorano in Italia. Il trend è in forte aumento: nel 2018 sono stati inviati all’estero 6,2 miliardi di euro, con una crescita annua del 20, 7 per cento.
      A registrarlo è uno studio della Fondazione Leone Moressa su dati Banca d’Italia, dopo il crollo del 2013 e alcuni anni di sostanziale stabilizzazione, oggi il volume di rimesse rappresenta lo 0,35% del Pil.

      Il primato del Bangladesh
      Per la prima volta, nel 2018 il Bangladesh è il primo Paese di destinazione delle rimesse, con oltre 730 milioni di euro complessivi (11,8% delle rimesse totali).
      Il Bangladesh nell’ultimo anno ha registrato un +35,7%, mentre negli ultimi sei anni ha più che triplicato il volume.

      Il secondo Paese di destinazione è la Romania, con un andamento stabile: +0,3% nell’ultimo anno e -14,3% negli ultimi sei.
      Da notare come tra i primi sei Paesi ben quattro siano asiatici: oltre al Bangladesh, anche Filippine, Pakistan e India. Proprio i Paesi dell’Asia meridionale sono quelli che negli ultimi anni hanno registrato il maggiore incremento di rimesse inviate. Il Pakistan ha registrato un aumento del +73,9% nell’ultimo anno. Anche India e Sri Lanka sono in forte espansione.

      Praticamente scomparsa la Cina, che fino a pochi anni fa rappresentava il primo Paese di destinazione e oggi non è nemmeno tra i primi 15 Paesi per destinazione delle rimesse.
      Mediamente, ciascun immigrato in Italia ha inviato in patria poco più di 1.200 euro nel corso del 2018 (circa 100 euro al mese). Valore che scende sotto la media per le due nazionalità più numerose: Romania (50,29 euro mensili) e Marocco (66,14 euro). Tra le comunità più numerose il valore più alto è quello del Bangladesh: ciascun cittadino ha inviato oltre 460 euro al mese. Anche i senegalesi hanno inviato mediamente oltre 300 euro mensili.

      https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2019-04-17/immigrati-boom-rimesse-piu-6-miliardi-all-estero-strano-caso-cinesi-spa
      #Italie #Chine #Bangladesh #Roumanie #Philippines

  • Food Sovereignty

    Food Sovereignty is a term that refers to both a movement and an idea (Wittman et al., 2010) however, as with most political concepts, it is essentially contested. This contested nature stems partly from the conviction of many of its transnational advocates that food sovereignty needs to be defined ‘from the bottom-up’ and as such it evades a precise single definition. While there is merit in such an approach given the diverse political and agro-ecological settings in which food sovereignty has emerged as a rallying cry for change, it also raises the question of whether food sovereignty can be relational without bounds [1].

    Whilst the lack of distinction of the food sovereignty concept continues to form a theoretical problem, which according to some prevents the further development of the debate[2], in practice the issue areas that food sovereignty advocates concern themselves with are very clear. The primary documentation issued by organisations like La Via Campesina and the declarations issued at the two Nyéléni meetings, include calls for the democratisation of the food system and the protection of the rights of small farmers. It also expresses a commitment to address the multiple inequalities reproduced within the current corporate-dominated food system. As such, food sovereignty builds upon a rights-based approach to food, but adds a qualifier to such rights. Human beings do not merely have a right to food, but rather ‘a right to food that is healthy and culturally appropriate, produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods’, which are defined by people instead of corporations or unaccountable governments [3]. In this manner, food sovereignty represents a radical alternative to the food security paradigm, which holds central the benefits of free food markets and seeks to solve the problem of world hunger through scientific innovation and increased market liberalisation.

    Whilst the precise origins of food sovereignty remain somewhat unclear, Edelman (2014) has put forward a strong case that it was first articulated in Mexico [4]. Additionally, as a result of Latin American peasant farmer organisation La Via Campesina’s use of the term and the fact that some of the movement’s key international meetings were deliberately held in the global South (at Nyéléni in Mali) so as to make a statement, food sovereignty itself is often seen as a ‘southern’ rallying cry. In part this is because it is associated with smallholder farming which is exercised more extensively within the global South. This is not to say that smallholder farmers do not exist within Europe or the United States,[5] or that the aspirations of small holder producers in Latin America, East Asia or elsewhere may not align with the food export-oriented framework that is conventionally understood as driven by ‘northern’ actors [6]. Nor is it to suggest that food sovereignty – where it pertains to democratisation and exercising ownership over a given food system – has no place in American and European societies. The geographic dimensions of food sovereignty, however, do serve to communicate that the negative socio-economic impacts resulting from the proliferation of large-scale industrialised food production elsewhere has been predominantly felt in the global South.

    Reflecting on the structure of the global food economy, it has been suggested that the fundamental interests of geographically differently located actors may be at odds with one another, even if they collectively mobilise behind the banner of food sovereignty [7]. Food sovereignty activists stand accused of taking a ‘big bag fits all’ approach (Patel) and brushing over the contradictions inherent in the movement. As already indicated above, however, whilst the broad geographic delineations may help to explain existing inequalities, the reproduction of binary North-South oppositions is not always conducive to better understanding the mechanisms through which such inequalities are reproduced. For example, factors such as the interaction between local elites and transnational capital or the role of food culture and dietary change are not easily captured through territorial markers such as ‘North’ and ‘South’.

    Essential Reading

    Holt-Gimenez, Eric & Amin, Samir, (2011) Food movements unite!: Strategies to transform our food system (Oakland: Food First Books).

    Alonso-Fradejas, A., Borras Jr, S. M., Holmes, T., Holt-Giménez, E., & Robbins, M. J. (2015). Food sovereignty: convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges. Third World Quarterly, 36(3), 431-448.

    Patel, Raj. (2009). Food sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:3, 663-706

    Further reading

    Andrée P, Ayres J, Bosia MJ, Mássicotte MJ. (eds.) (2014). Globalization and food sovereignty: global and local change in the new politics of food (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

    Carolan, Michael. (2014). “Getting to the core of food security and food sovereignty: Relationality with limits?” Dialogues in Human Geography 4, no. 2, pp. 218-220.

    Holt-Giménez, E. (2009). From food crisis to food sovereignty: the challenge of social movements. Monthly Review, 61(3), 142.

    Shiva, Vandana (1997). Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge (Cambridge: South End Press).

    Wittman, Hannah (ed.) (2011). Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature & community (Oxford: Pambazuka Press).

    Zurayk, R. (2016). The Arab Uprisings through an Agrarian Lens. In Kadri. A. (ed). Development Challenges and Solutions after the Arab Spring. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 139-152.

    https://globalsocialtheory.org/concepts/food-sovereignty
    #souveraineté_alimentaire #alimentation #définition

  • When the Camera Was a Weapon of Imperialism. (And When It Still Is.)

    I first saw the photograph some years ago, online. Later, I tracked it down to its original source: “In Afric’s Forest and Jungle: Or Six Years Among the Yorubans,” a memoir published in 1899 by the Rev. R.H. Stone. It shows a crowd in what is now Nigeria, but what was then Yorubaland under British colonial influence. The caption below the photograph reads: “A king of Ejayboo. Governor of Lagos on right. For years the rulers of this fierce tribe made the profession of Christianity a capital crime.” This description is familiar in tone from anthropological literature of the period, though the photograph is hard to date precisely. “Ejayboo” is what we would nowadays spell as “Ijebu,” a subgroup of Yoruba. That catches my attention: I am Yoruba and also Ijebu. This picture is a time capsule from a world to which I am connected but had not seen before, a world by colonial encounter.

    By the middle of the 19th century, through treaties and threats of force, the British had wrested control of the coastal city Lagos from its king. They then turned their efforts to improving access to the goods and services in the Yoruba hinterland. The Yoruba were already by that time a populous and diverse ethnic group, full of rivalrous kingdoms large and small, some friendly to the British, others less so.

    Stone, a Virginian sent by the Southern Baptist Convention, lived among them — lived among us — for two spells, in 1859-63 and 1867-69, before, during and after the American Civil War. He had this to say about Yoruba people: “They are reasonable, brave and patriotic, and are capable of a very high degree of intellectual culture.” It is praise, but must be understood in the context of a statement he makes earlier in his book about living “among the barbarous people” of that part of the world. In any case, the Ijebu in the mid-19th century were largely wealthy traders and farmers who did not want to give the British right of way to the interior of the country; only through diplomacy, subterfuge and violence were they finally overcome.

    This photograph was made in the aftermath. The white governor of Lagos — based on the plausible dates, it is probably John Hawley Glover — sits under an enormous umbrella. On one side of him is another high-ranking colonial officer. On the other side is the Ijebu king, or oba, probably the Awujale of the Ijebu kingdom, Oba Ademuyewo Fidipote.

    The oba wears a beaded crown, but the beads have been parted and his face is visible. This is unusual, for the oba is like a god and must be concealed when in public. The beads over his face, with their interplay of light and shadow, are meant to give him a divine aspect. Why is his face visible in this photograph? Some contravention of customary practice has taken place. The dozens of men seated on the ground in front of him are visibly alarmed. Many have turned their bodies away from the oba, and several are positioned toward the camera, not in order to look at the camera but in order to avoid looking at the exposed radiance of their king.

    The invention of the daguerreotype was announced in 1839. By the 1840s, photography had spread like wildfire and become a vital aspect of European colonialism. It played a role in administrative, missionary, scientific and commercial activities. As the Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera put it: “The camera has often been a dire instrument. In Africa, as in most parts of the dispossessed, the camera arrives as part of the colonial paraphernalia, together with the gun and the bible. ...”

    Photography in colonialized societies was not only a dire instrument. Subject peoples often adopted photography for their own uses. There were, for instance, a number of studios in Lagos by the 1880s, where elites could go to pose for portraits. But such positive side effects aside, photography during colonial rule imaged the world in order to study, profit from and own it. The colonial gaze might describe as barbarous both the oba’s beaded crown and his regal right to conceal himself. This was one of the repeated interactions between imperial powers and the populations that they sought to control: The dominant power decided that everything had to be seen and cataloged, a task for which photography was perfectly suited. Under the giant umbrella of colonialism, nothing would be allowed to remain hidden from the imperial authorities.

    Imperialism and colonial photographic practices both flourished in the 19th century, and both extended themselves, with cosmetic adaptations, into the 20th. In 1960, during the horrific French war on Algeria, the French military assigned a young soldier, Marc Garanger, to photograph people in an internment camp in the Kabylia region of Northern Algeria. Thousands of people had been confined in the region under armed guard, and the French military commander had decreed that ID cards were mandatory. A picture of each prisoner was required. Many of the women were forced to remove their veils. These were women who did not wish to be seen, made to sit for photographs that were not for them. (Photography played a different military role in the numerous aerial reconnaissance missions by the French, which resulted in thousands of negatives mapping the region.)

    Garanger’s photographs both record an injustice and occasion it. His alternative, not an easy one, would have been to refuse the order and go to prison. His pictures show us what we ought not to see: Young and old women, their hair free flowing or plaited, one face after the other, in the hundreds. They collectively emanate refusal. The women of Kabylia look through the photographer, certainly not considering him an ally. Their gazes rise from the surface of the photograph, palpably furious.

    When we speak of “shooting” with a camera, we are acknowledging the kinship of photography and violence. The anthropological photographs made in the 19th century under the aegis of colonial powers are related to the images created by contemporary photojournalists, including those who embed with military forces. Embedding is sometimes the only way to get a direct record, no matter how limited, of what is happening in an armed conflict. On occasion such an arrangement leads to images whose directness displeases the authorities, but a more common outcome has been that proximity to an army helps bolster the narrative preferred by the army.

    Still, photographic reportage has the power to quicken the conscience and motivate political commitments. Examples abound of photographs acting as catalysts in the public’s understanding of vital issues, from the images of Bergen-Belsen in 1945 to the photograph of the Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi in 2015. And yet, perhaps even more insistently, on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis, photography implicitly serves the powers that be. To insist that contemporary photographic practice — and I mean to include a majority of the international news coverage in newspapers like this one — is generally made (and published) for the greater good is to misconstrue history, because it leaves out the question of “Good for whom?” Such pictures aren’t for their subjects any more than the photograph in Stone’s book was for the Ijebus and their king.

    Certain images underscore an unbridgeable gap and a never-to-be-toppled hierarchy. When a group of people is judged to be “foreign,” it becomes far more likely that news organizations will run, for the consumption of their audiences, explicit, disturbing photographs of members of that group: starving children or bullet-riddled bodies. Meanwhile, the injury and degradation of those with whom readers perceive a kinship — a judgment often based on racial sympathy and class loyalties — is routinely treated in more circumspect fashion. This has hardly changed since Susan Sontag made the same observation in “Regarding the Pain of Others” (2003), and it has hardly changed because the underlying political relationships between dominant and subject societies have hardly changed.

    Without confronting this inequality, this misconstrual of history, photography will continue to describe itself as one thing (a force for liberation) while obdurately remaining another (an obedient appendage of state power). It will continue to be like the organs of the state that “spread democracy” and change regimes. Even when it appears to go against the state, it will only do so selectively, quaintly, beautifully, piteously, in terms that do not question the right of the state to assert power.

    For how long will these radically unequal societal realities endure? Many affecting photographs have been made during the huge waves of international migration of the past few years. These pictures issue, as usual, from the presumed rights of photographers to depict the suffering of people “out there” for the viewing of those “back home.” But in looking at these images — images of war, of starvation, of capsized boats and exhausted caravans — we must go beyond the usual frames of pity and abjection. Every picture of suffering should elicit a question stronger than “Why is this happening?” The question should be “Why have I allowed this to happen?”

    This is what the scholar Ariella Azoulay calls the “citizenship” of photography, its ability, when practiced thoughtfully, to remind us of our mutual responsibilities. When I look at the bewildering photographs of refugee camps in Richard Mosse’s recent book, “The Castle,” I feel indicted. The imperial underpinnings of Mosse’s project are inescapable: Using military-grade thermal cameras, he makes extremely complex panoramic images (stitched together from hundreds of shots) of landscapes in the Middle East and Europe in which refugees have gathered or have been confined. His pictures echo the surveillance to which these bodies are already subjected. But the thermal imaging renders the images very dark, with the humans showing up as white shapes (almost like a negative). The picture conceals what it reveals. We see people, but they remain hidden.

    This technique makes for uncanny images in which distressed people move about like the figures you see in dreams, indistinct but full of ghostly presence. At the Moria camp in Greece, it is snowing. We see a long snaking line of people, waiting. What are they waiting for? For some material handout, probably, for food or blankets or documents. But their waiting represents the deeper waiting of all those who have been confined in the antechamber of humanity. They are waiting to be allowed to be human.

    Mosse’s images, formally striking as they are, are unquestionably part of the language of visual domination. With his political freedom of movement and his expensive technical equipment, he makes meticulous pictures of suffering that end up in exquisite books and in art galleries. He is not the first photographer to aestheticize suffering, nor will he be the last. And yet, by suppressing color, by overwhelming the viewer with detail, by evoking racial horror rather than prettily displaying it and by including in his work philosophical considerations of the scenes he shows — “The Castle” contains essays by Judith Butler, Paul K. Saint-Amour and Mosse himself and a poem by Behrouz Boochani — he does something quite different from most photojournalists. He unsettles the viewer.

    Photography’s future will be much like its past. It will largely continue to illustrate, without condemning, how the powerful dominate the less powerful. It will bring the “news” and continue to support the idea that doing so — collecting the lives of others for the consumption of “us” — is a natural right. But with a project like “The Castle,” I have a little bit of hope that an ethic of self-determination can be restored. I have hope that the refugees of Moria, Athens, Berlin and Belgrade will gain a measure of privacy. The women of Kabylia will cover their faces and return to themselves as they wish to be. The oba’s beaded crown will fall back into place, shadowing his face. Photography writes with light, but not everything wants to be seen. Among the human rights is the right to remain obscure, unseen and dark.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html

    #photographie #colonialisme #post-colonialisme #impérialisme
    ping @albertocampiphoto @philippe_de_jonckheere

    Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop avec le commentaire suivant de Emmanuel Blanchard:

    L’auteur fait notamment référence au travail récent de #Richard_Mosse (exposition et ouvrage « The Castle ») dont il fait un compte rendu à la critique et laudatif. Un point de vue qui peut lui-même être critiqué... dans un sens plus critique.
    Pour accéder à quelques images de Richard Mosse :

    https://vimeo.com/302281332


    https://wsimag.com/art/33291-richard-mosse-the-castle
    https://bit.ly/2NglY08

    #réfugiés #asile #migrations #images #image

    The Castle

    Richard Mosse has spent the past few years documenting the ongoing refugee and migration crisis, repurposing military-grade camera technology to confront how governments and societies perceive refugees. His latest book The Castle is a meticulous record of refugee camps located across mass migration routes from the Middle East and Central Asia into the European Union via Turkey. Using a thermal video camera intended for long-range border enforcement, Mosse films the camps from high elevations to draw attention to the ways in which each interrelates with, or is divorced from, adjacent citizen infrastructure. His source footage is then broken down into hundreds of individual frames, which are digitally overlapped in a grid formation to create composite heat maps.

    Truncating time and space, Mosse’s images speak to the lived experience of refugees indefinitely awaiting asylum and trapped in a Byzantine state of limbo. The book is divided into 28 sites, each presenting an annotated sequence of close-up images that fold out into a panoramic heat map. Within this format, Mosse underscores the provisional architecture of the camps and the ways in which each camp is variously marginalised, concealed, regulated, militarized, integrated, and/or dispersed. His images point to the glaring disconnect between the brisk free trade of globalized capitalism and the dehumanizing erosion of international refugee law in European nation-states. Named after Kafka’s 1926 novel, The Castle prompts questions about the ‘visibility’ of refugees and the erosion of their human rights.

    The book comes with a separate book of texts, including a poem by Behrouz Boochani, the journalist, novelist and Iranian refugee currently held by the Australian government in confinement on Manus island, an essay by Paul K. Saint-Amour, associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, an essay by philosopher Judith Butler, and a text by Richard Mosse.


    #livre

  • Too Many Cities Are Growing Out Rather than Up. 3 Reasons That’s a Problem | World Resources Institute
    https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/01/too-many-cities-are-growing-out-rather-3-reasons-s-problem

    n our new World Resources Report paper, Upward and Outward Growth: Managing Urban Expansion for More Equitable Cities in the Global South, we analyzed growth patterns for 499 cities using remote sensing. While cities growing vertically through taller buildings are located predominantly in wealthier cities in North America, Europe and East Asia, cities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are growing mainly outward. These cities have the fewest financial resources to manage their growth but are expected to hold more than 2 billion additional people by 2050. As we know from the latest UN data, just three countries—India, China and Nigeria—are expected to account for 35 percent of global urban population growth between 2018 and 2050. As these cities grow in population, continuing their unwieldy expansion outward could push them into crises.

    https://www.wri.org/wri-citiesforall/publication/upward-and-outward-growth-managing-urban-expansion-more-equitable

    #urban_matter #cartographie #visualisation

  • Beware ! Les hordes asiatiques vont déferler sur l’Occident !
    Il s’agit de produits intermédiaires (diesel) raffinés en Chine.

    Armada of Giant New Tankers Lines Up to Ship Diesel Out of Asia - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/armada-of-giant-new-tankers-lines-up-to-ship-diesel-out-of-asia


    Photographer : Tim Rue/Bloomberg

    • Maintenance season in Europe seen pulling cargoes West
    • New China refineries, weak local demand seen driving shipments

    A fleet of giant newly built oil tankers is gearing up to ship diesel out of East Asia.

    Five very large crude carriers, which typically carry about 2 million barrels of oil each, are currently positioned in the seas off China’s eastern and southern coasts, according to shipping intelligence and tracking company Kpler. Two more newbuilds are set to swell that fleet shortly. If all were fully loaded, they would haul a total approaching what is currently held in independent storage in Europe’s key trading hub of the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp ports.

    It’s a large volume coming at once,” said Olivier Jakob, director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland.

    China is boosting output, with more refinery capacity coming online, while weak local demand for middle distillates is helping to push products west, said Jakob. The start of refinery maintenance season in Europe also stoking Western demand for the fuel. China’s first round of export quotas also signaled an increase in diesel exports at the start of the year, while independent gasoil/diesel stocks in ARA are at their lowest seasonally since 2014.

    Three of the seven VLCCs highlighted by Kpler — the San Ramon Voyager, Ascona and Olympic Laurel — have already taken on board a combined 3.5 million barrels of diesel, according to a Bloomberg calculation from Kpler data, but are not yet fully loaded. Of the remaining four, one is currently loading, one is en route to Singapore where it may take on product, and two have yet to fully leave their construction yards.

    We expect the majority of these cargoes to head west around the Cape of Good Hope,” said Eli Powell, a Kpler analyst. Discharging is likely in northwest Europe, with possible partial discharges in West Africa.

    European demand conditions are quite favorable,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, global head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas in London. “It would make sense to try to move a lot of volume into Europe in short order to meet that demand.

    The surge in Asian exports mirrors an increase in shipments of oil products, much of it diesel, from India and the Middle East into Europe in recent weeks. January’s monthly arrivals from India are set to hit their highest since at least 2017, and shipments from the Persian Gulf will be at their highest since July last year.

  • Cable ship capsizes near Singapore after tanker collision | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-tanker-crash-idUSKCN1P80NS


    The Star Centurion was at anchor when it was t-boned by the tanker Antea which was traveling at around 11.5 knots.

    An undersea cable and pipe-laying ship, the Vanuatu-flagged MV Star Centurion, capsized in the Indonesian waters of the Singapore Straits after a collision with a tanker on Sunday, with no fatalities, authorities said on Monday.

    The Singapore Straits are one of the world’s busiest shipping zones with hundreds of container ships, oil and fuel tankers and dry bulk carriers daily traversing the waters that connect east Asia to Europe, India and Africa.

    The collision happened just north of Bintan, an Indonesian island in the Riau Islands province that sits opposite the city-state of Singapore.

    “°It’s already capsized,°” Samsul Nizar, the head of operations at the Indonesian coast guard base at Tanjung Uban on Bintan, told Reuters by telephone, “°but it hasn’t sunk completely.°”

  • The Woman With Lapis Lazuli in Her Teeth - The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/the-woman-with-lapis-lazuli-in-her-teeth/579760

    Who was that person? A woman, first of all. According to radiocarbon dating, she lived around 997 to 1162, and she was buried at a women’s monastery in Dalheim, Germany. And so these embedded blue particles in her teeth illuminate a forgotten history of medieval manuscripts: Not just monks made them. In the medieval ages, nuns also produced the famously laborious and beautiful books. And some of these women must have been very good, if they were using pigment as precious and rare as ultramarine.

    (...) art experts were still skeptical. Some dismissed the idea that a woman could have been a painter skilled enough to work with ultramarine. One suggested to Warinner that this woman came into contact with ultramarine because she was simply the cleaning lady.

    #archéologie #femmes #nonnes_copistes #historicisation via @arnicas

  • Another year of military dictatorship in Thailand
    https://www.cetri.be/Another-year-of-military

    Monarchy, military and preparations for an #Election dominated Thailand’s politics this year, as they have since the 2014 coup. General Prayuth Chan-ocha and his junta continued to repress their political opponents, while making the military’s intention to dominate Thailand’s future politics more obvious. Two tasks defined the military junta’s political agenda upon seizing power in 2014. One was to undermine former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s political appeal and crush his electoral (...)

    #Southern_Social_Movements_Newswire

    / #Le_Sud_en_mouvement, #Thaïlande, #Militarisme, Election, Démocratie & participation, East Asia (...)

    #Démocratie_&_participation #East_Asia_Forum

  • Accelerated remittances growth to low- and middle-income countries in 2018

    Remittances to low- and middle-income countries grew rapidly and are projected to reach a new record in 2018, says the latest edition of the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief, released today.

    The Bank estimates that officially recorded remittances to developing countries will increase by 10.8 percent to reach $528 billion in 2018. This new record level follows robust growth of 7.8 percent in 2017. Global remittances, which include flows to high-income countries, are projected to grow by 10.3 percent to $689 billion.

    Remittance flows rose in all regions, most notably in Europe and Central Asia (20 percent) and South Asia (13.5 percent), followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (9.8 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (9.3 percent), the Middle East and North Africa (9.1 percent), and East Asia and the Pacific (6.6 percent). Growth was driven by a stronger economy and employment situation in the United States and a rebound in outward flows from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Russian Federation.

    Among major remittance recipients, India retains its top spot, with remittances expected to total $80 billion this year, followed by China ($67 billion), Mexico and the Philippines ($34 billion each), and Egypt ($26 billion).

    As global growth is projected to moderate, future remittances to low- and middle-income countries are expected to grow moderately by 4 percent to reach $549 billion in 2019. Global remittances are expected to grow 3.7 percent to $715 billion in 2019.

    The Brief notes that the global average cost of sending $200 remains high at 6.9 percent in the third quarter of 2018. Reducing remittance costs to 3 percent by 2030 is a global target under #Sustainable_Development_Goals (SDG) 10.7. Increasing the volume of remittances is also a global goal under the proposals for raising financing for the SDGs.

    https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/12/08/accelerated-remittances-growth-to-low-and-middle-income-countries-in-2018

    #remittances #migrations #statistiques #chiffres #2018 #coût #SDGs

    • #Rapport : Migration and Remittances

      This Migration and Development Brief reports global trends in migration and remittance flows. It highlights developments connected to migration-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for which the World Bank is a custodian: increasing the volume of remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) (SDG indicator 17.3.2), reducing remittance costs (SDG indicator 10.c.1), and reducing recruitment costs for migrant workers (SDG indicator 10.7.1). This Brief also presents recent developments on the Global Compact on Migration (GCM) and proposes an implementation and review mechanism.


      https://www.knomad.org/publication/migration-and-development-brief-30

      Pour télécharger le rapport :
      https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/Migration%20and%20Development%20Brief%2030%20advance%20copy.pdf

    • International Remittances Headline ACP-EU-IOM Discussions in #Ghana

      In Sub-Saharan Africa, the flow of remittances is on the rise, but the cost to transfer these funds is far higher than the global average, making the region the most expensive place in the world to send money.

      The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and partners focused on improving the use of migrant remittances, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa at a three-day regional thematic meeting starting today (19/02) in Accra, Ghana.

      International remittances have been taking on increasing weight in the global policy agenda in recent years according to Jeffrey Labovitz, IOM Regional Director for East and Horn of Africa, who is speaking at the event.

      “This in part reflects the growing understanding that improving and harnessing the flow of remittances can have a substantial impact on development,” he said.

      Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa grew from USD 34 billion in 2016 to USD 38 billion in 2017, an increase of over 11 per cent. Despite this increase – a trend which is expected to continue through 2019 – Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive place in the world to send money with an average cost of 9.4 per cent of the transfer amount, a figure that was 29 per cent above the world average in 2017. This is far short of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target 10.C.3 to reduce the transaction costs of migrant remittances to less than 3 per cent by 2030.

      “Almost 75 per cent of remittances are spent on consumption which greatly benefit the receiving households and communities,” said Claudia Natali, Regional Specialist on Labour Mobility and Development at the IOM Regional Office for West and Central Africa.

      “But more could be done to maximize the remaining 25 per cent. Fostering financial inclusion and promoting initiatives that help people manage the funds can go a long way to harness development impacts of remittances,” she added.

      The meeting, which runs through Thursday (21/02), is providing a platform for communication, exchange and learning for 80 participants involved in IOM’s “ACP-EU Migration Action", including migration experts and representatives from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) governments, regional organizations, the European Union (EU), UN agencies and NGOs working in remittances and diaspora mobilization.

      Given that remittances are at the heart of the joint ACP Group of States and European Union Dialogue’s recommendations on migration, discussions also aim to generate thematic recommendations for the Sub-Saharan region and establish links between the outcomes of the ACP-EU Migration Action programme, and processes relevant to the ACP-EU Dialogue on Migration and Development at the regional and global levels.

      The meeting is organized by IOM’s country office for Ghana and the IOM Regional Office in Brussels in partnership with the African Institute for Remittances (AIR) and Making Finance Work for Africa Partnership (MFW4A).

      IOM’s ACP-EU Migration Action, launched in June 2014, provides tailored technical support on migration to ACP countries and regional organizations. To date it has received 74 technical assistance requests from 67 ACP governments and 7 regional organizations, a third of which directly concern remittances.

      The programme is financed by the 10th European Development Fund (EDF) and supported by the ACP Secretariat and the EU. For more information on the ACP-EU Migration Action, go to: www.acpeumigrationaction.iom.int.

      https://www.iom.int/news/international-remittances-headline-acp-eu-iom-discussions-ghana

    • The cost of cross-border payments needs to drop

      FOR MOST of human history, sending money across borders has cost the earth. Thankfully for globetrotters and e-shoppers in the rich world, that has changed in the past decade. A shift from cash and travellers’ cheques towards digital payments has cut the cost of moving funds around. And a new generation of fintech firms has broken the stranglehold that big banks used to have on money transfers (see article). As a result, fees have fallen. The cost of a transfer between consumers or small firms who are both in G7 countries can now cost 2% or less. This year some $10trn will pass across borders. As prices fall further, the sums will grow.


      https://amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/04/13/the-cost-of-cross-border-payments-needs-to-drop
      #paywall

  • Water crisis puts trade war into perspective for China | Asia Times
    http://www.atimes.com/article/water-crisis-puts-trade-war-into-perspective-for-china

    China’s trade war with the United States has tended to dominate the news agenda in the past year. But a bigger challenge for Beijing could be the threat of a water crisis which would submerge the world’s second-largest economy and wash away growth.

    Two reports by Greenpeace East Asia and Chinadialogue.net, an independent, non-profit organization, have highlighted the risks that President Xi Jinping’s administration faces because of climate change and homegrown #pollution.

    Earlier this week, Greenpeace released research showing that glaciers in the western China provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, as well as the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, are rapidly melting, causing natural disasters and reducing the drinking-water supply.

    #Chine #Climat #eau

  • The Everyday Consumption of “#Whiteness”: The #Gaikokujin-fū (Foreign-Like) Hair Trend in Japan

    In feminist literature, the beauty and the fashion industries have at times been criticized for being one of the means through which women are objectified.1 Likewise, Critical Race Studies have often pinpointed how the existence of a global beauty industry has the effect of propagating Eurocentric beauty ideals.2 Throughout this article I aim to explore the complicated ways in which beauty and racialized categories intersect in Japan through an analysis of the female-targeted hair trend of the gaikokujin-fū (foreigner-like) hair.

    Essentialism is what prompts us to divide the world into two, “us” versus “them,” negating all that is in between the two categories or even changes within the categories themselves. Although this binary thinking has been subject to criticism by various disciplines, such as Critical Race Studies and Postcolonial Studies, it is still among the dominant ways in which human relations are performed in Japanese society. The essentialistic opposing duality between Foreignness and Japaneseness has been constructed in post-war Japan through widespread discourses known by the name nihonjinron (lit. the theories on the Japanese).3 Even though it could be understood as a powerful reply to American racism towards the Japanese, nihonjinron only confirms stereotypes by reversing their value, from negative to positive. Moreover, these theories have had the effect of emphasizing Japanese racial and cultural purity through the alienation and exoticization of the other, most often represented by the white “Westerner”4 (obeijin, seiyōjin, hakujin).

    The ambivalent exoticism that surrounds the foreigner (gaikokujin) has made it possible for racialised categories and consumerism to intersect in the archipelago. The beauty industry is particularly susceptible to the segmentation between “self” and “other,” and the global white hegemony has a certain influence over it. However, as Miller rightly observes, dominant beauty standards in Japan are equally influenced by local values of “Japaneseness.”5 Torigoe goes even farther: in her essay, she positions whiteness as a power relation and through her analysis she demonstrates how white women are constructed as Others in Japanese media representations, thus creating “a racial ladder that places Japanese people on top.”6 The link between whiteness and widespread beauty practices has been criticized also in studies of the neighbouring country of Korea, with scholars arguing that cosmetic surgeries in the country are successful only if they enhance the body’s natural “Koreanness.”7

    My aim in this paper is to tackle the capitalistic commercialization and fetishization of whiteness in contemporary Japan. As it will become clear throughout the analysis, the Japanese beauty industry is creating a particular image of whiteness that is suitable to the consumers’ needs and desires: this toned-down, less threating way of becoming “foreigner-like” is marketed as an accessory that far from overriding one’s natural features, is instrumental in accentuating and valorizing them. Investigating the peculiar position of this beauty trend, which has been affected by the influence of the two contrasting hegemonic discourses of white supremacy and the purity/superiority of the Japanese race, might be helpful in shedding some light on the increasingly complicated ways the concept of race is being constructed in a setting that has been often considered “other” to the Eurocentric gaze.

    Whiteness and the Global Beauty Industry

    Beauty is an important practice in our daily life, and as such it has been at the center of animated discussions about its social function. Seen as one of the practices through which gender is performed, it has been put into scrutiny by feminist literature. The approach used to analyze beauty has been dualistic. On the one hand, the beauty and fashion industries have been criticized for being among the reasons of women’s subordination, depriving them financially8 and imposing on them male normative standards of beauty.9 On the other, it has been cited as one of the ways in which female consumers could express their individuality in an oppressive world.10

    The increasingly globalized beauty and fashion industries have also been subjects of criticism from the viewpoint of Critical Race Studies. It is not uncommon to hear that these industries are guilty of spreading Eurocentric tastes, thus privileging pale-skinned, thin women with light hair.11 The massive sale of skin-whitening creams in Asia and Africa as well as the creation of new beauty standards that privilege thinness over traditionally preferred plump forms are often cited to defend this argument. At the same time, there have been instances in which this denouncing of Eurocentrism itself has been charged guilty of the same evil. Practices such as plastic surgery in South Korea and Japanese preference for white skin have been often criticized as being born out of the desire to be “Western”: these analyses have been contested as simplistic and ignoring the cultural significance of local standards of beauty in shaping beauty ideals.12

    Answers to these diatribes have not been yet found.13 It is nonetheless clear that beauty practices articulate a series of complex understandings about gender and race, often oscillating between particularisms and universalisms. Throughout this article I would like to contribute to this ongoing discussion analyzing how pre-existing notions of race and gender intersect and are re-shaped in a newly emerging trend aptly called gaikokujin-fū (foreigner-like) hair.

    Us/Others in Japan: The Essentialization of the Foreign
    Japan and the tan’itsu minzoku

    It is not uncommon to hear that Japan is one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world. In Japanese, the locution tan’itsu minzoku (single/unique ethnic group, people, nation), was often used as a slogan when comparing the archipelago with significantly multi-ethnic countries such as the USA.14 The notion of Japan as a mono-ethnic country is being starkly criticized in recent years:15 minorities such as the zainichi Koreans and Chinese who have been living in the country since the end of the second world war, the conspicuous populations of foreign immigrants from Asia and Latin America, as well as mixed-race people, who were thought of as a social problem until these last ten years,16 have been making their voices heard. In the following paragraphs, I will trace how the idea of a racially homogeneous Japan was constructed.

    The word minzoku (ethnic group, people, nation) first appeared in the Japanese language in the Taishō Period (1912-1926), as an alternative to the term jinshū (race).17 The concept of race did not exist prior to the Meiji period (1868-1912), when it was introduced by scholars as one of the ideas from the “West” that would have helped Japan become a modernized nation.18 It could be argued that while the opening up of Japan after the sakoku period was not the first time that the Japanese government had to interact with people of different racial features,19 it was the first time that the idea of racial hierarchies were introduced to the country. Japanese scholars recognized themselves to be part of the ōshoku jinshū (“yellow race”), hierarchically subordinate to the “white race.”20 With rising nationalism and the beginning of the colonization project during the Taishō period, the need arose for a concept that could further differentiate the Japanese people from the neighboring Asian countries such as the newly annexed Taiwan and Korea:21 the newly created minzoku fit this purpose well. Scholar Kawai Yuko compared the term to the German concept of Volk, which indicates a group whose identity is defined by shared language and culture. These traits are racialized, as they are defined as being “biological,” a natural component of the member of the ethnic group who acquires them at birth.22 It was the attribution of these intrinsic qualities that allowed the members of the naichi (mainland Japan) to be assigned in a superior position to the gaichi (colonies). Interestingly, the nationalistic discourse of the pre-war and of the war period had the double intent of both establishing Japanese supremacy and legitimizing its role as a “guide” for the colonies grounding it in their racial affinities: unlike the conquerors from Europe, the Japanese were of similar breed.

    These hierarchies were ultimately dissociated from the term minzoku after the end of the Second World War, when it was appropriated by Leftist discourse. Opposing it to ta-minzoku (multiethnic nation or people)23

    that at the time implied divisions and inequalities and was perceived as a characteristic of the Japanese Empire, Left-leaning intellectuals advocated a tan’itsu minzoku nation based on equality. The Leftist discourse emphasized the need of the “Japanese minzoku” to stand up to the American occupation, but the term gradually lost its critical nuance when Japan reached economic prosperity and tan’itsu minzoku came to mean racial homogeneity as a unique characteristic of Japanese society, advocated by the Right.24

    Self-Orientalism

    The term minzoku might have “lost his Volk-ish qualities,”25 but homogeneity in Japan is also perceived to be of a cultural nature. Sociologists Mouer and Sugimoto26 lament that many Japanese people believe to be the carriers of an “unique” and essentialized cultural heritage, that renders them completely alien to foreigners. According to the two scholars, the distinctive qualities that have been usually (self-)ascribed to Japanese people are the following: a weak individuality, the tendency to act in groups, and the tendency to privilege harmony in social situations.27 Essentialized “Japaneseness” is a mixture of these psychological traits with the products of Japanese history and culture. The perception that Japaneseness is ever unchanging and a cultural given of each Japanese individual was further increased by the popularity of the nihonjinron discourse editorial genre, which gained mass-media prominence in the archipelago after the 1970s along with Japan’s economic growth.28 Drawing on Said’s notion of Orientalism,29 Miller states that “in the case of Japan, we have to deal […] with the spectacle of a culture vigorously determined to orientalize itself.”30 According to Roy Miller, Japan has effectively constructed Japaneseness through a process of self-othering, which he refers to as self-Orientalism. The nihonjinron publications were very much influenced by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s highly influential “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” published in 1946. Benedict’s study of the “Japanese people” is based on the assumption that the USA and Japan are polar opposites where the former stands for modernity and individualism whereas the latter is characterized by tradition and groupism.31

    Japanese anthropologists and psychoanalysts, such as Nakane and Doi32 further contributed to the study of Japaneseness, never once challenging the polar opposition between the “Japanese” and the “Westernerners.”

    It would seem contradictory at first for a large number of people in Japan to have this tendency to think and consume their own culture through stereotypes. However, Iwabuchi draws attention to the fact that Japan’s self-Orientalism is not just a passive acceptance of “Western” values but is in fact used to assert the nation’s cultural superiority. It remains nonetheless profoundly complicit with Euro-American Orientalism insofar that it is an essentializing and reifying process: it erases all internal differences and external similarities.33 This essentialization that Japan is capitalizing on proves fundamental for the “West,” as it is the tool through which it maintains its cultural hegemony.

    Images of the Foreigner

    Images of the foreigner are not equal, and they form an important node in the (self-)Orientalistic relations that Japan entertains with the rest of the world. An essentialized view of both the Euro-American and Asian foreigner functions in different ways as a counterweight to the “we-Japanese” (ware ware Nihonjin) rhethoric.

    In the Japanese language, gaikokujin (foreigner) refers to every person who doesn’t have the same nationality as the country she/he lives in.34 The term gaikokujin does not have racial connotations and can be used to effectively describe anyone that is not a Japanese citizen. However, the racially-charged related term gaijin35 refers especially to the “white” foreigner.36 Written very similarly to gaikokujin, the word gaijin actually has a different origin and the double meaning of “foreigner” and “outsider.” The word carries strong implications of “othering,” and refers to the construction of the Europe and America as other to the young nation-state in the Meiji period, during which knowledge was routinely imported from the “West.”37 Thus, gaijin and the representation of foreigners-as-other came to reflect the dominant hierarchies of nineteenth-century “Western” knowledge.38

    Putting every white-skinned individual in the same category functions as a strategy to create the antithetical “West” that is so important as a marker of difference in self-Orientalism: it serves to create an “Other” that makes it possible to recognize the “Self.”39 At the same time, it perpetuates the perception of whiteness as the dominant position in America and Europe. In her analysis on the use of foreigner models in Japanese advertisements, Creighton notes that representation of gaijin positions them both as a source of innovation and style and as a potential moral threat.40

    This splitting is not uncommon when dealing with representations of the Other. What generates it is the fetishistic component that is always present in the stereotype.41 Bhabha argues that this characteristic allows the Other to be understood in a contradictory way as a source of both pleasure and anxiety for the Non-Other. Stuart Hall draws on Bhabha’s theories to state that the stereotype makes it so that this binary description can be the only way in which is possible to think of the Other–they generate essentialized identities.42 In the Japanese context, the gaijin, fulfilling his role as a racially visible minority,43 is thus inscribed in the double definition of source of disruption and person to admire (akogare no taishō).

    Whiteness in the Japanese Context

    Akogare (admiration, longing, desire) is a word that young women44 in Japan often use when talking about the “white, Western” foreigner. Kelsky explains that the word indicates the longing for something that is impossible to obtain and she maintains that “it is a rather precise gloss […] of the term “desire” in Lacanian usage. […] Desire arises from lack and finds expression in the fetish. The fetish substitutes the thing that is desired but impossible to obtain.”45 Fulfilment of this unattainable desire can be realized through activities such as participation in English conversation classes and engaging in conversation with “Western” people.46 The consumption of “Western” images and representations as well as everyday practices associated with the Euro-American foreigner could also be considered a fetish that substitutes the unattainable object of desire. In this sense, the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend might be for the producers one such way of catering to young Japanese women’s akogare for the “Western” world.

    Gaikokujin-fū is inextricably connected to gaijin, “white” foreigners. For instance, the Hair Encyclopedia section of the website Hotpepper Beauty reports two entries with the keyword gaikokujin-fū: gaikokujin-fū karā (foreigner-like color) and gaikokujin-fū asshu (foreigner-like ash). The “color” entry states the following:

    Gaikokujin-fū karā means, as the name suggests, a dye that colors the hair in a tint similar to that of foreigners. The word “foreigner” here mostly stands for people with white skin and blond hair that are usually called “American” and “European.”47

    Similarly, the “ash” entry explains the following:

    The coloring that aims for the kind of blond hair with little red pigments that is often found among Americans is called gaikokujin-fū asshu.

    Asshu means “grey” and its characteristic is to give a slightly dull (dark?) impression. It fits well with many hairstyles ranging from short cuts to long hair, and it can be done in a way to make you look like a “western” hāfu (mixed race individual).

    It is clear from these descriptions that the term gaikokujin-fū is racially charged. What hairdresser discourse is trying to reproduce is a kind of hair color associated with America and Europe’s Caucasian population. They are selling “whiteness.”

    Writing from the viewpoint of multicultural England, Dyer writes that the study of the representation of white people is important because “as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm.”49 White discourse is ubiquitous, and it is precisely this unmarked invisibility that makes it a position of dominance. The representation of people belonging to minority groups is inevitably marked or tied to their race or skin color, but Caucasians are often “just people.” At the base of white privilege there is this characteristic of universality that is implied in whiteness.

    The marked positioning of the white foreigner in Japanese society would seem an exception to this rule. Torigoe, while acknowledging that the Japanese media “saturated [her] with images of young white females as the standard of beauty,”50 analyzes in her article how white beauty actually embodies values such as overt sexual attractiveness that would be considered deviant or over the top by standard societal norms.51 Likewise, Russell points to the scrutiny that the bodies of the white female woman receive on Japanese mass media, dominated by a male gaze. White females become subject to the sexual curiosity of the Japanese male, and being accompanied by one of them often makes him look more sophisticated and competitive in a globalized world.52 As the most easily, less controversially portrayed Other through which Japanese self-identity is created, the white individual is often subject to stereotyping and essentialization. Russell notes this happening in both advertisement and the portrayal of white local celebrities, that assume even “whiter” characteristics in order to better market their persona in the Japanese television environment.

    However, it is my opinion that we must be careful to not be exceedingly uncritical of the marginality that Caucasians are subject to in Japanese society. I argue that whiteness is in an ambiguous position in the Japanese context: it would be wrong to say that in the archipelago white people do not benefit from the privileges that have accompanied their racialization up to the present times. The othering processes that whites are subject to is more often than not related to them being brought up and representing a different culture than to their racial difference.54 The word hakujin (lit. white person) is barely used in everyday conversation, whereas it is more common to hear the term kokujin (lit. black person): white people are not reduced to their racial characteristics in the same way as black people might be.55 Whiteness might not be the completely hegemonic in the Japanese context, but the country does not exist in a vacuum, and its standards have been influenced by the globally hegemonic white euro-centric values to some extent.

    To reiterate, white people in the Japanese archipelago experience the contradictory position of being a visible minority subject to reifying “othering” processes while at the same time reaping many of the benefits and privileges that are usually associated with the color of their skin. They are socially and politically located at the margins but are a hegemonic presence in the aesthetic consciousness as an ideal to which aspire to. In the following sections, I will expand on gaikokujin’s ambiguous location by looking at the ways in which whiteness is consumed through the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend.

    Producing Whiteness: Selling gaikokujin-fū Hair
    Creating the “New”

    In order to understand the meanings shaping the catchphrase gaikokujin-fū, I have used a mixture of different approaches. My research began by applying the methods of Visual Analysis56 to the latest online promotional material. I have tried to semiotically analyze the pictures on the websites in relation to the copywriting. In addition, I have complemented it with fieldwork, interviewing a total of seven hairdressers and four girls aged from 20 to 2457 in the period between April and June 2017. It was while doing fieldwork that I realized how important social networking is for the establishment of contemporary trends: this is frequently acknowledged also in the press by textually referencing hashtags.58 Instagram is a very important part of Japanese girls’ everyday life, and is used both as a tool for self-expression/self-promotion as well as a compass to navigate the ever-growing ocean of lifestyle trends. Japanese internet spaces had been previously analyzed as relatively closed spaces created and accessed by predominantly Japanese people, and this had implications on how online discourses about races were carried on.59 However, being a predominantly visual medium, Instagram also functions as a site where information can, to a large extent, overcome language barriers.

    The gaikokujin-fū hashtag counts 499,103 posts on Instagram, whereas 381,615 pictures have been tagged gaikokujin-fū karā.60 Most of them are published by professional whose aim is to publicize their work, and it is not uncommon to find pricing and information for booking in the description.

    Scrolling down the results of the Instagram search, it is easy to notice the high number of back and profile shots; what the hairdressers are trying to show through these pictures is their hairdressing skills. By cutting out the face they are putting the hair itself at the center of the viewer’s attention and eliminating any possibility of identification. The aim here is to sell “whiteness” as an object. The trendsetters are capitalizing on a term (gaikokujin-fū) that has already an appealing meaning outside the field of hair coloring, and that is usually associated with the wider desire or longing (akogare) for “Western” people, culture and lifestyle.

    To the non-initiated, the term gaikokujin-fū might indicate anything that is not “Japanese like” such as curly hair, or blonde hair. However, it became clear when speaking to my hairdresser informants that they only used the term referring to the ash-like coloring. Professionals in the field are reclaiming it to define a new, emerging niche of products that only started appearing a couple of years ago.61 In doing so, Japanese hairdressers are creating a new kind of “whiteness” that goes beyond the “Western” cultural conception of white as blonde and blue-eyed, in order to make it more acceptable to Japanese societal standards. In fact, fair hair is considered extremely unnatural.62 The advantage that ash brown hair has over blonde is the relatively darker shade that allows consumers to stand out without being completely out of place.63

    However, gaikokujin-fū hair comes at a cost. All of my informants told me during the interviews that the colors usually associated with this trend involve dyes have a blue or green base, and are very difficult to recreate on most people of the East Asia whose naturally black hair has a red base. The difficulty they experienced in reproducing the Ash (asshu) and Matt colors on Japanese hair constituted a fundamental charm point for hair technicians, and precisely because of this being able to produce a neat ash coloring might be considered synonymous with keeping on pace with the last technology in hair dying. The Wella “Illumina Color”64 series came out in September 2015, while Throw,65 a Japanese-produced series of hair dyes that eliminate the reddish undertones of Japanese black hair, went on sale very recently in June 2016.66 Another Japanese maker, Milbon, released its “Addichty Color”67 series as recently as February 2017. The globally dominant but locally peripheral whiteness has been “appropriated” and domesticated by Japanese hairdressers as a propeller of the latest trends, as a vital tool in creating the “new.”

    To summarize, the technological developments in hair dyes certainly gave a big push to the popularizing of the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend. Moreover, in a very chicken-and-egg-like fashion, the technological advancing itself was at the same time motivated by the admiration and desire towards Euro-American countries. However, this desire for “Westerness” does not entail adopting whiteness in its essentialized “purest” form,68 as that would have negative implications in the context of Japanese society. Rather, Japanese trendsetters have operated a selection and chosen the variant of whiteness that would be different enough to allow the creation of the “latest” while minimizing its more threatening aspects.
    Branding the “New”

    In the previous section I mentioned the fact that most of pictures posted on the social network Instagram serve to amplify and diffuse existing values for consumption, and constantly refer to a set of meanings that are generated elsewhere reifying them. Throughout this section I will examine the production of these values through the branding of the aforementioned hair dye brands: Wella’s “Illumina Color,” THROW, and Milbon’s “Addichty Color.”

    Wella’s “Illumina Color” offers an interesting case study as it is produced by an American multinational brand. Comparing the Japanese website with the international one, it is clear that we have before our eyes a prime example of “glocalization.”69 While on the international webpage70 the eye-catch is a picture of a white, blue-eyed blonde woman that sports an intricate braided hairstyle with some purplish accents in the braid, the Japanese71 version features a hāfu-like72 young woman with long, flowing straight dark brown hair. The description of the product also contains the suggestive sentence “even the hard and visible hair typical of the Japanese [can become] of a pale, soft color.” The keywords here are the terms hard (katai) and soft (yawaraka). Hardness is defined as being a characteristic typical of the Japanese hair texture (nihonjin tokuyū) and it is opposed to the desired effect, softness. The sentence implies by contrasting the two terms that softness is not a characteristic of Japanese hair, and the assumption could be taken further to understand that it is a quality typical of the “foreign.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the international webpage contains no such reference and instead vaguely praises the hair dye’s ability to provide a light color. The visuals of the latter are consistent with Dyer’s definition of whiteness.

    Unlike Wella, Milbon and beauty experience are Japanese companies, and their products ORDEVE Addichty and THROW are only geared to the Japanese marketplace. Milbon’s ORDEVE Addichty dye series is the most recent of the two. The product’s promotional webpage is almost entirely composed of pictures: the top half features 14 moving pictures, two for each of the seven colours available. The pictures slide in a way that shows the customer all the four sides of the model’s bust up, and each one of the girls is holding a sign with the name of the product. To the center left, we see a GIF image with the name of the brand in the roman and Japanese alphabet, accompanied by the catchphrase hajimete mitsukaru, atarashii watashirashisa (“I found it for the first time, a new way of being myself”), that slides into another text-filled picture that explains the concepts behind the branding.

    Occidental-like (ōbeijin) voluminous hair with a shine (tsuya) never seen before. This incredible feeling of translucence (tōmeikan) that even shows on your Instagram [pictures], will receive a lot of likes from everybody. Let’s find the charm of a freer myself with Addichty color!

    The red-diminishing dyes are here associated with both physical and ideological characteristics identified as “Western,” like the “feeling of translucence” (tōmeikan)73 and “freedom” (jiyū). The word tōmeikan is a constant of technical descriptions of gaikokujin-fū and it is generally very difficult for the hairdressers to explain what does it mean. My hairdresser informant N. quickly explained to me that having translucent hair means to have a hair color that has a low red component. Informants H. and S., also hair professionals, further explained that translucency is a characteristic typical of hair that seems to be semi-transparent when hit by light. While in the English-speaking world it would certainly be unusual to positively describe somebody’s hair as translucent, tōmeikan is a positive adjective often used as a compliment in other different contexts and it indicates clarity and brightness. In fact, the Japanese Daijisen dictionary lists two definitions for translucent, the second of which reads “clear, without impurities.”74 It is perhaps in relation to this meaning that the melanin-filled black core of the Japanese hair is considered “heavy” (omoi) and strong. Reddish and lighter brown colors are also defined in the same way. What is more, even hair colors at the other end of the spectrum can be “muddy”(nigori no aru): blonde hair is also described as such.75 It is clear that while tōmeikan is a quality of “occidental hair,” it is not a characteristic of all the shades that are usually associated with whiteness.

    In the last sentence, “freedom” is linked to charm (miryoku) and the individual. These three concepts are also very often associated with the foreigner. The freedom of the gaijin is a freedom from social constraints and from the sameness that pervades dominant representations of Japaneseness.76 Individualism is further emphasized by the pronoun “myself,” which in the original Japanese is a possessive pronoun to the word “charm” (miryoku). As a word, miryoku has an openly sexual connotation, and because of this it might be linked to the concept of “foreignness.” As Torigoe found out in her analysis of Japanese advertisements, white women are often represented as a sexualized counterpart to the more innocent Japanese woman.77 Gaikokujin-fū hair offers customers the possibility to become closer to obtaining this sexiness, that distances the self from the monotone standards of society.

    Of the three, THROW is possibly the most interesting to analyze, mostly because of the huge quantity of content they released in order to strengthen the brand image. In addition to the incredibly detailed homepage, they are constantly releasing new media contents related to gaikokujin-fū coloring on their “THROW Journal.”78

    The “story” page of the website serves as an explanation of the brand identity. It is a vertically designed page heavy on images, possibly designed to be optimally visualized in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The first image that the viewer encounters is that of a girl whose brown hair is flowing in the wind, which results in some strands covering the features of her pale-white face. This makes it hard to understand her nationality and makes it so that all the attention is focused on the light, airy qualities of the hair. As I said before, “lightness” (karusa) is associated to translucency and is one of the characteristics at the center of the marketing of gaikokujin-fū. This picture very clearly renders those sensations in a way that is very pleasant to the eye and indeed invites consumption.

    Under the picture we find a very short narration that complements it. In bigger characters, the words dare de mo nai, watashi ni naru, that roughly translates as “I’ll become a myself, that is nobody else.” Here again we find an emphasis on individuality and difference. Scrolling down, we find the following paragraph written in a smaller font:

    I leave my body to the blowing wind.

    My hair is enveloped in light, and is filled by the pleasant air.

    What I needed was this [facial] expression.

    I got rid of what I did not need, and refreshingly freed my mind.

    Gracefully, freely.

    I should just enjoy myself more.79

    Unlike the tagline in the Addichty webpage, THROW’s brand identity is here described in ideological terms only. Once again, “freedom” is the central theme, and is associated with a sensation of freshness (kaze, “the wind”; also, the onomatopoeia sutto, here rendered as “refreshingly”). The image of release is further emphasized by the fact that “I” of this text is in close contact with nature: her skin feels the wind, she is shrouded in light and breathes pure air. But what is the subject being released from? The fourth and the last line would suggest that she is being trapped by social constraints, something akin to the Freudian super-ego, that somehow renders her unable to enjoy herself for what she really is. My literal translation of the sixth line makes it hard to understand the hedonistic implications of its meaning: what the original Japanese implies is not simply that she should “have fun,” but she should be finding pleasure in what she is and not what she is expected to be. It is perhaps strange to the eyes of the Euro-American observer accustomed to the discourse of white supremacy that the consumption of whiteness comes with an invitation to spontaneity. The whiteness being sold here is certainly perceived in a radically different way from the Eurocentric “West,” where it is associated with self-constraint.80 It is being marketed to the Japanese public in a way that reminds the portrayal of minorities in the white-dominated world,81 and that makes it particularly appealing to the archipelago’s consumers.

    Listening to the producers’ interviews, it becomes clear for them that the red pigments of the hair, as a symbol of this self-Orientalistically represented “Japaneseness” are represented as a further constraint. Producer Kimura Naoto speaks of a “liberation from redness for the women who hate it”;82 fellow member of the production team Horiuchi brings up the ever-present desire in Japanese women to “become like foreigners,”83 but neither of the two explains the connection between the deletion of red pigments from the hair and the possibility of becoming foreigner-like. It is perhaps this lack of an explicit connection in an explanation from an expert that makes it perceived as an “obvious truth.” In fact, nobody seems to refer to the fact that red undertones are common overseas as well, not to mention the existence of redheads in predominantly Caucasian regions. By hiding these facts, the red pigments are constructed as something that is peculiarly Japanese and juxtaposed to the exclusively foreign blue pigments, further contributing to the essentializing of the gaikokujin that propels self-Orientalism.

    Consuming Whiteness: Gaikokujin-fū and Everyday Life

    To understand the ways that gaikokujin-fū was being interpreted and consumed I conducted fieldwork for two months (April-June 2017) in Tokyo. Engaging in participant observation proved to be relatively easy, since superficial conversation about beauty trends is one of the most common ways that young women around my age use to socialize. Most of my peers were very quick to react every time I lightly introduced the subject. However, due to the perceived “lightness” of the topic, not many people showed to be willing to talk prolongedly about it. This prompted me to supplement the fieldwork with semi-structured interviews I conducted with four people aged 20-22.

    The general reaction to the gaikokujin-fū buzzword was one of recognition–the existence of the trend was acknowledged both by people who were actually familiar with it as well as by others who were not really interested but had seen the phrase and recognized a more general idea behind it. As the reader might expect after having gone through the previous chapter, consumers of gaikokujin-fū hair all brought up the difficulties they had in obtaining the desired results. When I first contacted K., a 23-year-old university student in Tokyo, she told me to wait till the following week for the interview since she had an appointment to dye her hair of an ash-like color. Seven days later, I was surprised to see that her hair had not changed much. Turns out that her virgin hair was a very difficult base to work with: having never bleached it, it proved to be very resistant to blue-green dyes. Dying the hair of an ash-like color would have been impossible as the naturally red pigments of the hair would have completely nullified the effect.

    Whiteness as Empowerment, Whiteness as Difference

    K. was nonetheless very accommodating and answered my questions very enthusiastically. To her, the word gaikokujin had indeed a very positive meaning, and she specifically associated it to difference. My informant used a very harsh word when talking about her fellow Japanese: to her, Japanese style equals mass-production. Her image of Japan was perfectly congruent with those described by Mouer and Sugimoto in their critique of Nihonjinron. “Ordinary” Japanese girls were, in her opinion, the cutesy and quiet girls with straight black hair and bangs covering their foreheads. Why did she feel attracted to gaikokujin-fū in the first place? K. felt that the “traditional” Japanese image was constraining, and she had both very physical and empirical reasons (she does not like face with bangs) as well as a specific ideological background. It is worth nothing here that K. has had since her childhood a very strong akogare towards “Western countries”: she has studied English since she was a small child and is now studying Italian, which led her to spend a year abroad in the University of Venice. Moreover, she attended a very liberal protestant high school in Tokyo, where students were allowed to dye their hair and had no obligation to wear the school uniform. She herself stated that the liberal environment she was brought up in had a huge influence on her view of the world and thus she did not feel the need to “conform.” K. speaks from a privileged position that allowed her to glimpse a “different” world, in which she is promised freedom. In a similar fashion to the representations I analysed in the previous chapter, “Western” foreign becomes a symbol of liberation from the societal constraints of a traditionalistic society.

    The liberating qualities of the akogare towards the essentialized “Western” foreign have been brought up in previous research as a space for young women to astray themselves from the hierarchies of everyday life. The link between freedom and diversity was indeed particularly strong in K., who feels somehow “oppressed” by certain aspects of society. However, this is far from being a universal mode of consumption: in fact, the other three girls never even mentioned anything ideological. To S., a 22-year-old girl I met while studying in Tokyo two years ago, dying her hair of an ash-like hue was an act genuinely finalized to the enhancement of her beauty: she thought the color made her face look brighter. While she too stated during the interview that foreigners are viewed as cool and fashionable, she did not allude to a desire to “become” one nor she mentioned any ideological values associated with them that she emphasized with. In her everyday practice, whiteness is consumed as a tool regardless of its hegemonic signified. Informants A. and H. talked about the trend in a similar way. H. initially dyed her hair because she liked how cute ash hair looked on her favourite model, and had little more to say other than that. Her friend A., who recently graduated from a fashion school, confessed that in her environment standing out was more the rule than a subversive act. Her ash phase was brief and followed by even more explosive hues such as blue and pink. S., A., and H., were very much less conscious of their ways of consumption, but, as French theorist Michel de Certeau argues,84 it is precisely the aimlessness of their wandering that make their practices subvert the hegemony established by the global white supremacy. Having gaikokujin-fū hair is one of the strategies that Japanese women have at their disposition to attain beauty, and while it is trendy, it is far from being superior to different styles. Whiteness becomes an accessory that enhances the natural beauty of the self, and it is not employed to override one’s original racial features but rather to enrich them through the display of individuality. Under this light, it is possible to see the consumption of foreign-like hair as an unconscious tentative of overcoming the racialized barriers that might generate uncanny feelings in the eyes of the “white” spectator.

    Subdued Subversion and the Ambiguities of Consumption

    There are however at least two factors that complicate the consumption of gaikokujin-fū hair, making it a multifaceted and complex process. Firstly, during my interview with K. we discussed the differences between this and other fashion trends that tend to refuse the stereotypical sameness of the constructed Japanese image. K. suggested the existence of an even more individualistic trend–Harajuku–style fashion. The Harajuku district of Tokyo is famous world-wide for hosting a wide range of colourful subcultures,85 which my interviewee described with terms such as dokusouteki (creative) and yancha (mischievous). Harajuku fashion is individuality taken to such a level in which it becomes even more openly contestant of society. S. described these subcultures as referencing the image of “an invented fantasy world, completely out of touch with reality.” The gaikokujin-fū hair colour is indeed a way to break out of the “factory mould,” but it is a relatively tame way of doing it as it is the consumption of a domesticized otherness. As I also pointed out during the analysis of the production processes, the aesthetics of the trend are largely shaped in relation to societal norms and purposely do not excessively break out of them. Especially in its darker tones, foreign-like ash hair is visually closer (albeit chemically harder to obtain) than platinum blonde, and it is precisely in these shades that the hue is being consumed by girls like K. and S.

    Furthermore, one could say that Gaikokujin-fū hues can at times be experimentations instrumental to the formation of one’s identity. H. and S. both explained that they tried out ash dyes as a phase, only then to move on to something that they thought better reflected their own selves. In both cases, that meant going back to their natural black color and to darker tones. H., in particular, after spending her three years of freedom in university experimenting with various hues, finally concluded in her fourth and final year that natural black hair was “what suits Japanese people best.”. After trying out the “Other” and recognizing it as such, her identification acted as what Stuart Hall might have called a suture between her as an acting subject and the discursive practices of “Japaneseness.”86 As “foreignness,” and whiteness as one of its variants, cannot be easily conceived outside the dominant self-Orientalistic discourses, even gaikokujin-fū is inevitably bound to the essentialized “Japaneseness” of the Nihonjinron. This is only worsened by the fact that foreign-like hair colors are a product in the beauty market: they need to be marketed to the consumers, and this necessitates simplification. Essentialization and the reinforcement of self-Orientalism are the high prices that one must pay for the consumption of the other, and constitute a big limitation of its subversive power.

    Conclusion

    I have attempted to analyse the ways in which whiteness is produced and consumed in Japan, a country with significant economic and cultural power that does not have a significant Caucasian population. I have chosen as the topic a feature of the human body that is usually considered peripherical to the construction of racialized categories, and I have attempted to demonstrate how it becomes central in the production of an occidentalistic image of “whiteness” in the Japanese Archipelago.

    What this trend helps us to understand is the complexities and multiplicities of whiteness. By shedding some light on the way that hairdressers in Japan construct and sell the gaikokujin-fū trend we become aware of the fact that an aspect such as hair color that we do not usually pay much attention to in relation to this racialized category can be central when the same is consumed in a different setting. It is significant that what is being marketed here it is a slightly different paradigm from the Eurocentric or conventional idea of “white” people, that sees at its center blonde-haired, fair-skinned people with blue or green eyes: whiteness is mitigated and familiarized in order to make it more desirable to wider audiences. Its localized production and its consumption as a disposable accessory might be taken as challenging to the global dominance of Caucasian aesthetic.

    Acting in the (locally) ambiguous field of racial representations,87 hairdressers in Japan are creating their own whiteness, one that is starkly defined by what is socially acceptable and what is rejected.88 It thus becomes apparent the fact that racialized categories are nothing but discourses, constantly morphing in relation to time and space. The existence of a different whiteness created by and for the use of people who are not considered as belonging to this racialized category creates conflict with the discourse of a global, hegemonic whiteness by demonstrating its artificiality and construction.

    However, the use of the word gaikokujin inevitably generates ambivalent meanings. The trend becomes linked to the discourse of “foreignness” and the desires associated with it. Eventually, it ends up reproducing the essentialist and reifying stereotypes that are creating through the occidentalistic (and self-Orientalistic) practices of nihonjinron. The trend potentially reinforces the “us/them” barriers that are at the basis of essentialistic thought by juxtaposing the desired “foreign hair” as a polar opposite of the more conservative and traditional “Japanese hair.”

    To reiterate, gaikokujin-fū might be subversive on the global scale, but it is nonetheless an expression of the oppressive mainstream on the local level, as it restates notions of difference and exclusivity that form the basis for social exclusion of phenotypically alien foreigners. Unfortunately, the practices of marketing necessitate simplifications, and makes it is hard to achieve what I believe would be the most subversive action: the elimination of these reifying barriers. It is imperative that we start to think about ways to talk about race and culture in a non-essentializing manner while maintaining an anti-white-centric stance.

    Although the problem of essentialization cannot be resolved by looking at representation only, by looking at how the product is effectively consumed in everyday life we might find that these semi-conscious practices already offer some hints on how to overcome the barriers that reification builds around us. It is indeed true that consumers answer to the “call” of the marketers, and that they identify themselves to some extent with the images of racialized whiteness created by the beauty industry. However, what the interviews revealed is that often times the link between image and product is broken in the immediacy of consumption. By using whiteness as an accessory, some of the consumers open up a space in which they contest the seriousness and rigidity of racialized categories–a space that allows hybridity to exist.


    http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-4/the-everyday-consumption-of-whiteness-the-gaikokujin-fu-foreign-like-
    #corps #beauté #femmes #géographie_culturelle #japon #cheveux #identité #altérité #orientalisme #blancheur #hakujin #blancs #représentation

  • Le monde dans nos tasses

    « Thé ? Café ? Chocolat ? » Cette litanie du matin, formulée dans tous les hôtels du monde, évoque à chacun un rituel quotidien immuable : celui du petit déjeuner. Qui peut en effet imaginer se réveiller sans l’odeur stimulante d’un café, la chaleur enrobante d’un thé ou la douceur réconfortante d’un chocolat chaud ?
    Et pourtant, ces #boissons, pour nous si familières, n’ont rien d’européennes. Ni le caféier, ni le théier, ni le cacaoyer ne poussent dans les contrées tempérées. Alors comment ces produits ont-ils fait irruption dans nos tasses, et ce dès le XVIIIe siècle, au point de devenir nos indispensables complices des premières heures du jour ?
    En retraçant l’étonnante histoire du petit déjeuner, de la découverte des denrées exotiques à leur exploitation, de leur transformation à leur diffusion en Europe et dans le monde, c’est toute la grande histoire de la mondialisation et de la division Nord/Sud que Christian Grataloup vient ici nous conter.
    Ainsi chaque matin, depuis trois siècles, en buvant notre thé, notre café ou notre chocolat, c’est un peu comme si nous buvions le Monde…


    https://www.armand-colin.com/le-monde-dans-nos-tasses-trois-siecles-de-petit-dejeuner-9782200612283
    #livre #petit-déjeuner #mondialisation #globalisation #Grataloup #Christian_Grataloup #géohistoire #géographie_de_la_mondialisation #thé #café #cacao #chocolat #alimentation #RAP2018-2019

    #ressources_pédagogiques

    • Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

      With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say “tea” in the world. One is like the English term—té in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi.

      Both versions come from China. How they spread around the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before “globalization” was a term anybody used. The words that sound like “cha” spread across land, along the Silk Road. The “tea”-like phrasings spread over water, by Dutch traders bringing the novel leaves back to Europe.

      The term cha (茶) is “Sinitic,” meaning it is common to many varieties of Chinese. It began in China and made its way through central Asia, eventually becoming “chay” (چای) in Persian. That is no doubt due to the trade routes of the Silk Road, along which, according to a recent discovery, tea was traded over 2,000 years ago. This form spread beyond Persia, becoming chay in Urdu, shay in Arabic, and chay in Russian, among others. It even made its way to sub-Saharan Africa, where it became chai in Swahili. The Japanese and Korean terms for tea are also based on the Chinese cha, though those languages likely adopted the word even before its westward spread into Persian.

      But that doesn’t account for “tea.” The Chinese character for tea, 茶, is pronounced differently by different varieties of Chinese, though it is written the same in them all. In today’s Mandarin, it is chá. But in the Min Nan variety of Chinese, spoken in the coastal province of Fujian, the character is pronounced te. The key word here is “coastal.”

      The te form used in coastal-Chinese languages spread to Europe via the Dutch, who became the primary traders of tea between Europe and Asia in the 17th century, as explained in the World Atlas of Language Structures. The main Dutch ports in east Asia were in Fujian and Taiwan, both places where people used the te pronunciation. The Dutch East India Company’s expansive tea importation into Europe gave us the French thé, the German Tee, and the English tea.

      Yet the Dutch were not the first to Asia. That honor belongs to the Portuguese, who are responsible for the island of Taiwan’s colonial European name, Formosa. And the Portuguese traded not through Fujian but Macao, where chá is used. That’s why, on the map above, Portugal is a pink dot in a sea of blue.

      A few languages have their own way of talking about tea. These languages are generally in places where tea grows naturally, which led locals to develop their own way to refer to it. In Burmese, for example, tea leaves are lakphak.

      The map demonstrates two different eras of globalization in action: the millenia-old overland spread of goods and ideas westward from ancient China, and the 400-year-old influence of Asian culture on the seafaring Europeans of the age of exploration. Also, you just learned a new word in nearly every language on the planet.


      https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-to-conquer-the-world
      #mots #vocabulaire #terminologie #cartographie #visualisation

  • #Rohingya crisis: 132 MPs across region call for Myanmar to be referred to ICC | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/24/rohingya-crisis-132-mps-across-region-call-for-myanmar-to-be-referred-t

    More than 130 members of parliament, across five countries in south-east Asia, have demanded that Myanmar be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the most united condemnation from the region since the violence began against the Rohingya a year ago.

    In a joint statement released by Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, they called for the Myanmar military to be “brought to justice” for its “ murderous operation in Rakhine State”.

    Speaking on behalf of those 132 who had issued the statement, APHR member Charles Santiago, a Malaysian politician in the ruling coalition, said: “As Myanmar is clearly both unwilling and unable to investigate itself, we are now at a stage where the international community must step in to ensure accountability.”

    #birmanie

  • L’écart se creuse entre les besoins et les offres de places de réinstallation pour les réfugiés

    Le HCR, l’Agence des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés, s’est déclaré aujourd’hui préoccupé par l’écart croissant entre le nombre de réfugiés ayant besoin d’une réinstallation et les places offertes par les gouvernements à travers le monde.

    Dans son rapport 2019 sur les besoins prévus de réinstallation dans le monde (Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2019 report, en anglais) présenté à Genève lors de sa réunion annuelle sur le sujet, le HCR montre que le nombre de réfugiés en attente d’une solution dans des pays tiers atteindrait 1,4 million en 2019 selon les prévisions, tandis que le nombre de places de réinstallation dans le monde est tombé à seulement 75 000 en 2017. Sur la base de ces chiffres, il faudrait 18 ans pour que les réfugiés les plus vulnérables à travers le monde soient réinstallés.

    « Au Niger où je me trouvais la semaine dernière seulement, j’ai vu combien la réinstallation permet littéralement de sauver des vies et ce, grâce à un dispositif innovant qui permet d’évacuer vers le Niger des réfugiés libérés d’épouvantables conditions en Libye pour les réinstaller ensuite dans de nouveaux pays. Nous avons besoin de davantage de places de réinstallation pour que ce programme perdure et de voir dans tous les États une transposition massive de ce type d’objectif commun et de détermination afin de relever les défis qui se posent au monde aujourd’hui », a déclaré Filippo Grandi.

    L’augmentation des possibilités de réinstallation offertes aux réfugiés dans des pays tiers est l’un des objectifs clés d’une nouvelle approche globale des crises de réfugiés approuvée en septembre 2016 par les 193 États Membres des Nations Unies dans la Déclaration de New York pour les réfugiés et les migrants, ainsi que l’un des axes majeurs du nouveau Pacte mondial sur les réfugiés qui sera présenté à l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies d’ici la fin 2018.

    « La réinstallation n’est pas seulement une essentielle bouée de sauvetage pour certains des individus les plus vulnérables de la planète, c’est aussi un moyen concret pour les gouvernements et les communautés de mieux partager la responsabilité de la crise mondiale des déplacements. Nous avons d’urgence besoin que de nouveaux pays viennent rejoindre les rangs des États de réinstallation et que ces derniers trouvent des moyens pour élargir leurs propres programmes », a encore déclaré Filippo Grandi.

    Trente-cinq pays font aujourd’hui partie du programme de réinstallation du HCR, contre 27 États en 2018. Selon le rapport, des réfugiés de 36 nationalités relevant de 65 opérations menées dans différents pays du monde ont aujourd’hui besoin d’une réinstallation. Les réfugiés originaires de Syrie et de République démocratique du Congo représentaient deux tiers des dossiers de réinstallation présentés par le HCR en 2017.

    Le HCR exhorte les pays à accueillir davantage de réfugiés de différents pays et opérations qui présentent d’impérieux besoins en matière de protection internationale et à s’engager à les accueillir durablement. À l’heure actuelle, seulement 14 des 25 États de réinstallation reçoivent des réfugiés provenant de plus de trois opérations de réinstallation. Le HCR appelle également les États à réserver au moins 10 % des places offertes aux cas graves et urgents présentés par le HCR.

    Plus de 250 délégués gouvernementaux et représentants d’ONG, d’universités, d’entreprises privées et de réfugiés participent aux consultations tripartites annuelles du HCR sur la réinstallation qui se tiennent cette semaine à Genève et constituent le premier forum sur les problèmes en matière de réinstallation à travers le monde.

    http://www.unhcr.org/fr/news/press/2018/6/5b32163ca/lecart-creuse-besoins-offres-places-reinstallation-refugies.html
    #réinstallation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #places_de_réinstallation #monde #statistiques #chiffres #monde #besoins

    #rapport :
    Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2019


    http://www.unhcr.org/5b28a7df4

    @_kg_ Tu peux montrer dans ton mémoire que la réinstallation... une solution pendant la crise indochinoise, aujourd’hui, ne marche plus ! Ce qui, aussi cause les problèmes de blocages dans les pays de transit.
    (regarde tout ce fil de discussion, sur la réinstallation)

    • What Next for Global Refugee Policy? Opportunities and Limits of Resettlement at Global, European and National Levels

      Only a small minority of refugees worldwide currently has access to resettlement programmes. In this present crisis in global refugee policy, resettlement is nonetheless a promising approach to dealing with refugee situations. The Policy Brief analyses the state of play as regards the resettlement system in Germany, Europe and at global level, as well as the development and implementation of alternative admission pathways such as humanitarian programmes and private sponsorship schemes. Based on this analysis, the Policy Brief discusses whether resettlement is an alternative or addition to territorial asylum and how alternative pathways can fit into the mix of available admission procedures, and it presents recommendations for action in regard to developing resettlement policy.

      https://www.svr-migration.de/en/publications/resettlement
      #Allemagne

    • The EU has started resettling refugees from Libya, but only 174 have made it to Europe in seven months

      Abdu is one who got stuck. A tall, lanky teenager, he spent nearly two years in smugglers’ warehouses and official Libyan detention centres. But he’s also one of the lucky ones. In February, he boarded a flight to Niger run (with EU support) by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, to help some of those stranded in Libya reach Europe. Nearly 1,600 people have been evacuated on similiar flights, but, seven months on, only 174 have been resettled to Europe.

      https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2018/06/26/destination-europe-evacuation

    • US Sets Refugee Admissions at Historic Low

      The United States will cap the number of refugee admissions in the coming year at 30,000, President Donald Trump announced Thursday, an anticipated move by his administration that refugee advocates had lobbied against in recent weeks.

      The refugee ceiling for the 2019 fiscal year will be the lowest in the history of the program, which in recent years saw 60,000 to nearly 90,000 refugees arrive in the country annually.

      “We are troubled by this decision to further limit America’s role in offering protection to those who need it most,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), one of the leading resettlement agencies in the country. “The United States is capable of far more than this.”

      For three decades, the U.S. was the leading resettler of refugees the United Nations determined could not safely stay in their country of asylum, or return to their home country. Canada and Australia trailed at a sizable distance until Trump took office.

      He and his cabinet implemented a series of policy decisions that chipped away at the country’s refugee program, cutting the cap from 110,000 during the last year of President Barack Obama’s tenure, to 45,000 in 2018, and now to 30,000 for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

      Trump insisted that additional security measures were needed for refugees, and added extra vetting for those from certain countries. Since then, the number of arrivals dropped. In FY 2018, the U.S. accepted 22,491 refugees — less than half of the proposed ceiling.

      Evidence-based data does not support the idea that there is an increased security risk posed by refugees selected for resettlement to the U.S.

      Before the State Department announced its intent to resettle a maximum of 30,000 refugees this fiscal year, advocates lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push for 75,000.

      The required consultation between Congress and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday was unsuccessful in budging the Trump administration on the cap.

      The regional allocations for FY 2019, according to Thursday’s presidential determination, are:

      Africa — 11,000

      East Asia — 4,000

      Europe and Central Asia — 3,000

      Latin America/Caribbean — 3,000

      Near East/South Asia — 9,000

      https://www.voanews.com/a/us-sets-refugee-admissions-at-historic-low/4600218.html

  • European refugees are making it to America, but many others are not...
    https://diasp.eu/p/6997939

    European refugees are making it to America, but many others are not

    Source: Niskanen Center by Matthew La Corte

    “At the halfway point of fiscal year 2018, the Trump administration has resettled 87 percent of the European refugee cap, but other regions are lagging far behind. Just 21 percent is filled for Africa, 20 percent for Latin America and the Caribbean, and 16 percent for the Near East and South Asia, according to data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center. The U.S. has resettled just 23 percent of the overall refugee cap after six months. … The U.S. has resettled so few refugees from regions other than Europe because the administration has slowly — but deliberately — depleted resources away from certain regions. The situation is further exacerbated by the (...)

  • China’s Military Handed Control of the Country’s Coast Guard - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/military-control-of-china-coast-guard-adds-edge-to-sea-disputes

    China’s decision to give its top military body control over the country’s vast coast guard has increased concerns about the risk of miscalculation in the disputed waters of East Asia.

    The ruling Communist Party is transferring authority over Asia’s biggest coast guard fleet to the Central Military Commission from the civilian State Oceanic Administration, as part of a sweeping government overhaul announced last week in Beijing. That will give President Xi Jinping — China’s commander-in-chief — direct control over the ships that the country often relies on to assert territorial claims across the region.

  • Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia: Top three stunning admissions from the top U.S. general in the Middle East

    Assad has won, Iran deal should stand and Saudis use American weapons without accountability in Yemen: head of U.S. military’s Central Command’s stunning Congressional testimony

    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/top-three-stunning-admissions-from-the-top-u-s-general-in-the-region-1.5910

    Haaretz and Reuters Mar 16, 2018

    The top U.S. general in the Middle East testified before Congress on Tuesday and dropped several bombshells: from signaled support for the Iran nuclear deal, admitting the U.S. does not know what Saudi Arabia does with its bombs in Yemen and that Assad has won the Syrian Civil War.
    U.S. Army General Joseph Votel said the Iran agreement, which President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw from, has played an important role in addressing Iran’s nuclear program.
    “The JCPOA addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran, so if the JCPOA goes away, then we will have to have another way to deal with their nuclear weapons program,” said U.S. Army General Joseph Votel. JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is the formal name of the accord reached with Iran in July 2015 in Vienna.
    Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from the accord between Tehran and six world powers unless Congress and European allies help “fix” it with a follow-up pact. Trump does not like the deal’s limited duration, among other things.
    Votel is head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia, including Iran. He was speaking to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the same day that Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after a series of public rifts over policy, including Iran.
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    Tillerson had joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in pressing a skeptical Trump to stick with the agreement with Iran.
    “There would be some concern (in the region), I think, about how we intended to address that particular threat if it was not being addressed through the JCPOA. ... Right now, I think it is in our interest” to stay in the deal, Votel said.

    When a lawmaker asked whether he agreed with Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford’s position on the deal,Votel said: “Yes, I share their position.”
    Mattis said late last year that the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it was proven Tehran was not complying or that the agreement was not in the U.S. national interest.
    A collapse of the Iran nuclear deal would be a “great loss,” the United Nations atomic watchdog’s chief warned Trump recently, giving a wide-ranging defense of the accord.
    Iran has stayed within the deal’s restrictions since Trump took office but has fired diplomatic warning shots at Washington in recent weeks. It said on Monday that it could rapidly enrich uranium to a higher degree of purity if the deal collapsed.
    Syria
    Votel also discussed the situation in Syria at the hearing.
    During the Syrian army’s offensive in eastern Ghouta, more than 1,100 civilians have died. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russia and Iran, say they are targeting “terrorist” groups shelling the capital.
    U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned on Monday that Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the U.N. Security Council failed to act on Syria.
    Votel said the best way to deter Russia, which backs Assad, was through political and diplomatic channels.
    “Certainly if there are other things that are considered, you know, we will do what we are told. ... (But) I don’t recommend that at this particular point,” Votel said, in an apparent to reference to military options.
    Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether it was too strong to say that with Russia and Iran’s help, Assad had “won” the civil war in Syria.
    “I do not think that is too strong of a statement,” Votel said.
    Graham also asked if the United States’ policy on Syria was still to seek the removal of Assad from power.
    “I don’t know that that’s our particular policy at this particular point. Our focus remains on the defeat of ISIS,” Votel said, using an acronym for Islamic State. 
    Saudi Arabia
    In a stunning exchange with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Votel admitted that Centcom doesn’t know when U.S. fuel and munitions are used in Yemen. 
    “General Votel, does CENTCOM track the purpose of the missions it is refueling? In other words, where a U.S.-refueled aircraft is going, what targets it strikes, and the result of the mission?” Warren asked.
    “Senator, we do not,” Votel replied.
    The Senator followed up, citing reports that U.S. munitions have been used against civilians in Yemen, she asked, “General Votel, when you receive reports like this from credible media organizations or outside observers, is CENTCOM able to tell if U.S. fuel or U.S. munitions were used in that strike?”
    “No, senator, I don’t believe we are,” he replied.
    Showing surprise at the general’s response, Warren concluded, “We need to be clear about this: Saudi Arabia’s the one receiving American weapons and American support. And that means we bear some responsibility here. And that means we need to hold our partners and our allies accountable for how those resources are used,” she said.

  • COMPARING SYRIA TO OTHER CRISES.
    https://www.acleddata.com/2018/03/02/comparing-syria-to-other-crises

    Many believe Syria constitutes the worst crisis in a decade. Indeed, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner has stopped counting fatalities in 2014,[1] the amount of US (2017) and Russian (2016) airstrikes is unprecedented[2] and after distinct crises such as Sinjar, Khan Shaykhun new ones continue to arise (Eastern Ghouta, Afrin). How ‘bad’ is Syria in a comparative perspective?

    Syria is very bad compared to other spaces. Syria averages 70 violent reported events per day, and is currently as violent as all African conflicts plus South Asian fragile countries combined (see visual). To comprehend this number, take a combination of Kenya and Burundi’s lingering unrest, with the Congo’s emerging war, the continuing crises in CAR, Somalia, both Sudan’s, conflict in Nigeria, AQIMS increasing presence in West-Africa and Libya’s continuing problems, and still you do not equal the number of clashes and attacks in Syria’s conflict. Or consider that the number of events during one week of the Afrin offensive (the week of February 5, 2018) is similar in intensity to all violence in the Middle East (with active conflicts like Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq) plus all protests/incidents in South-East Asia.

    While scholars will contest over competing explanations for the decades to come, ACLED conflict data suggest two key insights. First, Syria is not special because its violence profile is very different. Syria shares a similar violence profile with Iraq and Yemen, meaning that actors engage in the same type of violence but just with an incredible intensity. Second, Syria is not more violent because it gets better reported on. Our ‘overlap-scores’ suggest that the detection rate of violence in Syria is not very different from other contexts. What may instead be a fruitful avenue is the finding that conflict size and intensity seem to be distributed according to an exponential function.[3] That means that the vast majority of conflicts experience (comparatively) little violence while some conflicts at the very tail end of the distribution are incredibly violent (see visual).[4] Syria unfortunately belongs to this latter category.

  • The thawing Arctic threatens an environmental #catastrophe - Skating on thin ice
    https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721364-commercial-opportunities-are-vastly-outweighed-damage-climate-th
    Commercial opportunities are vastly outweighed by damage to the climate

    [...]

    Amid all this bad news about the state of the Arctic, the #business opportunities associated with warming were supposed to cheer at least a few. The Arctic is an ocean covered in ice, ringed by land (whereas the Antarctic is a lump of land covered in ice, ringed by ocean). The eight Arctic countries have interests in shipping, fishing and drilling in the region. But finding profits amid the thaw is tough. Prospects look bleaker in many industries than they did five years ago as the risks are better understood.

    The Arctic contains more than a fifth of the world’s untapped hydrocarbon resources. But in the North American Arctic offshore drilling was banned in December almost everywhere to protect ecosystems (although Donald Trump may reverse the moratorium). Elsewhere, low prices and the difficulties of operating in the Arctic’s dangerous waters now repel big firms attracted to the region back when oil fetched over $100 a barrel.

    In a stunning about-turn, Shell ended operations in the Chukchi Sea in 2015 after spending $7bn on exploration there. It says it did not find enough oil to justify continuing. Russian firms, such as Rosneft, are proving hardier. They have fewer opportunities to invest elsewhere, after all, and Russia needs the money. Low oil prices have taken a toll on an economy which relies on the Arctic for a fifth of GDP and a fifth of exports.

    The shipping industry is another for which Arctic promise has drifted away. In theory shipping firms should benefit from access to a more open seaway. Using it to sail from northern Europe to north-east Asia can cut the length of voyages by two-fifths compared with travelling via the Suez Canal. But an expected shipping boom has not materialised. In 2012 only 1m tonnes of goods were shipped through the northern passage, a paltry level of activity yet one not achieved since.

    Even in the summer months the Arctic ocean is stormy, making timely delivery of goods impossible to guarantee. Drifting ice also poses a danger. Ships must be strengthened to withstand it, adding to construction costs. And a lack of coastal infrastructure, such as deepwater ports, means that spills of the heavy fuel oil that powers most vessels could wreak havoc on both ecosystems and reputations, because clean-up missions would have to set out from much farther away and would take much longer to be effective.

    A new Polar Code from the International Maritime Organisation, which regulates shipping, came into force at the beginning of the year to try to address some of these concerns. It bans sewage discharges in polar waters and ones of oily mixtures. America and Canada, among others, want to go further. For one thing, they want a ban on heavy fuel-oil (as there is in the Antarctic, which has various special protections).

    Mining firms, interested in metals such as copper, are eyeing up the Arctic. But most firms do not have the experience to negotiate with indigenous groups over projects on their land (about one in ten people in the region is from such a group). And many of the inhabitants oppose development anyway. In Norway the Sami parliament, which represents Sami people from across the country, is wary. Jon Petter Gintal, who deals with international affairs at the parliament, says blighting the landscape would be foolish. Tourists, keen to see rugged natural beauty, may sustain the Arctic economy in future decades as traditional livelihoods, such a reindeer herding, prove harder to maintain.

    #climat

  • Container port throughput growth in Q3 the highest for almost seven years - The Loadstar
    https://theloadstar.co.uk/container-port-throughput-growth-q3-highest-almost-seven-years

    In the clearest sign yet that the lingering effects of the 2009 global financial crisis on the shipping industry have come to an end, global container port throughput figures surged in the third quarter of this year.

    According to Alphaliner’s quarterly port survey – which covers the 200 ports representing around 75% of global container handling – global throughput grew 7.7% year-on-year.

    This was the highest rate of growth since the beginning of 2011, which, in turn, had marked the end of a worldwide inventory restocking phase in the aftermath of the crash.
    […]
    Growth at China’s ports, including Hong Kong, hit 9.3%, outpacing other ports in both North and South-east Asia, which grew 4.3% and 4.2% respectively.

    The strongest ports were container gateways, rather than transhipment hubs. The chief import receiving gateways of Los Angeles, New York and Rotterdam all saw double-digit increases, although growth was more muted at Antwerp and Hamburg, which saw increases of 5.8% and 1.2% respectively.

    And double-digit growth was also seen at a host of Chinese export gateways.

  • How Azerbaijan, Georgia, And Turkey Subverted Russia And Isolated Armenia With New Railway

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/30/new-silk-road-azerbaijan-georgia-and-turkey-unite-over-new-rail-line-armenia

    Depuis le temps qu’on en parle. Un événement social, politique et économique majeur dans le Caucase

    After many years of anticipation and delays, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) rail line has ceremoniously gone into service. Its first train just pulled out of the New Port of Baku on Monday, making its first official run across Azerbaijan and Georgia to the east of Turkey. The presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey along with the prime ministers of Georgia and Kazakhstan showed up at the commencement gala and symbolically drove in the final railroad spikes.

    BTK Overview

    The BTK rail line, which extends from the bank of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the capital city of Georgia before carrying on to Turkey, where it feeds into the broader Turkish rail system to Europe beyond, was first envisioned in 1993 after an existing railway that went to Baku via Armenia was shut down due to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict.

    #caucase #Transport_ferroviaire #arménie #géorgie #azerbaïdjan #turquie #btk

  • #SwissLeaks : the map of the globalized tax evasion - Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization - Cool Infographics

    http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2017/10/3/swissleaks-the-map-of-the-globalized-tax-evasion.html

    pas mal du tout ... Et merci à Etienne Côme de l’avoir signalé sur Twitter

    http://www.coolinfographics.com/storage/post-images/Swissleaks-tax-havens.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1506570336216

    HSBC “Swiss Leaks” data shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reflect the globalization of tax evasion. While billions of dollars are inconceivable, mapping the origin of bank account holders allows an overview. This map is only a small contribution to the understanding of the Swiss Leaks data.
    Why this map?

    This map does voluntary not strictly stick to the geographical reality. It is a response to too many maps published in the media these days that are made unreadable by regrettable graphic choices: top-ten limited, overlapping points, colored territories (small countries and islands disappear), etc.
    What does it show?

    The number of affected countries and their diversity is very important. Note the strong presence of the Caribbean. In proportion to their population, South and East Asia are very poorly represented, while the Middle East is over-represented. The strong presence of “tax havens” is explained by the use of intermediates by the holders of bank accounts.

    #évasion_fiscale #paradis_fiscal #corruption #visualisation #anamorphose

  • Atlas of Challenges and Opportunities in European Neighbourhoods

    CIST – Collège international des sciences du territoire

    http://www.gis-cist.fr/en/portfolio/atlas-of-challenges-and-opportunities-in-european-neighbourhoods

    https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-28521-4

    Pierre Beckouche, Pierre Besnard & Hugues Pecout (eds.), Springer, 2016

    https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-28521-4.pdf

    This atlas provides a macro-regional overview of the areas that surround the European Union, from the Sahara to the Middle East, Western Balkans to European Russia, Turkey to the Arctic. Detailing key socio-economic data as well as developmental trends, the maps provide a comprehensive territorial analysis at local scale and explore the potential for regional integration and cooperation.
    These pioneering maps examine challenges that threaten this wide yet inter-connected region, including environmental concerns in the North, political unrest in the East, social factors in the Western Balkans, and the upheaval in the Mediterranean since the Arab spring. Coverage investigates such key countries and areas as Libya, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Ukraine, as well as explores such essential issues as Europe’s energy procurement. In addition, it also presents a comparison with other world regions such as East Asia and North America.
    In the end, readers discover that territorial integration faces many shortcomings, but that deep regional cooperation would be a key driver for the EU’s sustainable future.

    This atlas features the main results of the “Integrated Territorial Analysis of the Neighbourhoods” research project undertaken by ESPON (The European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion). It provides scholars, local authorities and NGOs involved in cross-border cooperation, companies interested in energy, agriculture, water, transportation and communication, and interested readers with key insights into this important region.

    #europe #voisinage #atlas #cartographie