{"title":"COVID-19 and the Corpse of Neoliberal Globalization","authors":"Tung-yi Kho","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7720","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of the death, socio-economic devastation, and radical uncertainties it has unleashed, this paper re-examines globalization anew. This paper’s focus is on the role that neoliberalism has played in precipitating the COVID-19 disaster, especially in the wealthiest nations of the West. Re-visiting history, the paper takes issue with the rhetoric of globalization that had been sold as a project ushering in an interconnected global village exalting culture and community. Against such exuberance, the paper recalls that globalization was a post-Cold War project celebrating liberal-capitalism’s ‘triumph’ over state-socialism. It reveals globalization to be foremost about economic accumulation, not community edification. Moreover, in the realm of ideology and policymaking, the past four decades have seen liberalism devolving into neoliberalism, and many national states becoming financialized corporate states. Especially in the West, the liberal state has been captured and financialized. Austerity—not redistributive growth—has reigned, engendering historically unprecedented social polarization which COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated. Globalization, I argue, has served as rhetorical cover for the social destructiveness of ‘neoliberalism’. The approaches and outcomes of pandemic management in much of the West are a further indictment of neoliberalism. Whereas ‘herd immunity’ had been the early de facto pandemic strategy of many neoliberal Western governments, most of East Asia a state-led commitment to ‘zero transmission’ and minimum casualties, leading to vastly different health outcomes.","PeriodicalId":35198,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"90 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88445177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Question of Tone","authors":"D. Lempert","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7539","url":null,"abstract":"Language, itself, as a source of communication, can also be a form of establishing an identity and setting barriers to communication. This article presents one example of such barriers in a major national language; that of the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese language is one of the markers of identity that Vietnamese often claim as the distinguishing feature of their culture, particularly its use of tone. As an assimilative culture changing rapidly with absorption into the global, urban economy, the Vietnamese language is now one of the only fixed identity markers of the Vietnamese. This may be why the Vietnamese now seek to establish it as a symbol and a barrier. This piece, by an American anthropologist, critically examines the Vietnamese perception of their language and its role among other identity markers in creating boundaries between Vietnamese and outsiders. ","PeriodicalId":35198,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"271 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73305904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SUR - Otros puntos de vista","authors":"I. Campbell","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v18i1-2.7693","url":null,"abstract":"This suite of short poems with Latin American references draws from original versions written in Spanish in 2008 and early 2011. It now follows on from other poems with Latin American refrerences written by the poet in languages other than Spanish as part of the poet's interest in 'trilingual poetics'. Spanish is not the first language of the writer nor is the poet of Latin American heritage. It is part of a 'corpus' of poems which aims to explore the potentialities of multiple language perspectives associated with or derived from a single poetic theme or set of themes. It is also part of the poet's explorations of what can be derived from some identification as a poet 'of the south'.","PeriodicalId":35198,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83207021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transnational Memory and the Fukushima Disaster: Memories of Japan in Australian Anti-nuclear Activism","authors":"A. Brown","doi":"10.5130/PJMIS.V17I1-2.7094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PJMIS.V17I1-2.7094","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues for the importance of transnational memories in framing Australian anti-nuclear activism after the Fukushima disaster. Japan looms large in the transnational nuclear imaginary. Commemorating Hiroshima as the site of the first wartime use of nuclear weapons has been a long-standing practice in the Australian anti-nuclear movement and the day has been linked to a variety of issues including weapons and uranium mining. As Australia began exporting uranium to Japan in the 1970s, AustraliaJapan relations took on a new meaning for the Indigenous Traditional Owners from whose land uranium was extracted. After Fukushima, these complex transnational memories formed the basis for an orientation towards Japan by Indigenous land rights activists and for the anti-nuclear movement as a whole. This paper argues that despite tenuous organizational links between the two countries, transnational memories drove Australian anti-nuclear activists to seek connections with Japan after the Fukushima disaster. The mobilisation of these collective memories helps us to understand how transnational social movements evolve and how they construct globalisation from below in the Asia-Pacific","PeriodicalId":35198,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42369515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}