(De-)stigmatising the outsider: nuclear-armed India, United States, and the global nonproliferation order

Smetana, Michal

doi:10.1057/s41268-018-0165-x

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Hanson, 2022). This argument is in line with literature that highlights the role of power and social stratification in the social construction of deviance in world order (Adler-Nissen, 2014;Smetana, 2020a;Wagner et al, 2014).…”

Section: Conclusion and Avenues For Further Researchsupporting

confidence: 88%

NPT as an antifragile system: How contestation improves the nonproliferation regime

Smetana

O’Mahoney

2021

Contemporary Security Policy

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We introduce "antifragility" as a conceptual framework to understand the impact of occasional violations of regime norms on the health of respective regimes. Contrary to the prevailing understanding of norm violation as a strictly negative phenomenon that leaves regimes damaged, we show that normative deviance is, under certain conditions, a stressor that helps predominantly antifragile systems learn, improve, and adapt to changes in both internal and external environments. We apply this conceptual framework to the case of the NPT regime and the prominent violations of its nonproliferation norms by India in the 1970s (as a "contestation from outside") and Iraq in the 1990s (as a "contestation from within"). Our findings question the prevailing catastrophizing narrative about the strictly negative impact of norm violations on regime stability and contribute to contemporary scholarly debates about norm dynamics within the NPT.

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Section: Conclusion and Avenues For Further Researchsupporting

confidence: 88%

NPT as an antifragile system: How contestation improves the nonproliferation regime

Smetana

O’Mahoney

2021

Contemporary Security Policy

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“…Therefore, unless the stigmatized group has acquired the full status of cultural and social recognition, the disappearance of the deviant attribute would not automatically lead to destigmatization. In other words, we expect that lack of recognition or "inclusive cultural membership" (Lamont 2018; Claire, Daniel, and Lamont 2016) leads to the possibility that even though the deviant attribute may be shed, a new deviant attribute associated with the group could be conceived, so that the group will remain stigmatized and marginalized (Goffman 1963, 9;Smetana 2020).…”

Section: Destigmatizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To mask or not to mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic: how Chinese students in America experience and cope with stigma

Zhan

2020

Chinese Sociological Review

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Chinese students in the U.S. are confronted with the double jeopardy of virus and stigma amid the COVID19. This study focuses on their choice and impact of mask wearing during this pandemic. How do they navigate and negotiate the troubling and contradictory directives about masks coming from their home and host countries during this pandemic? What are the impacts of their experiences on their attitudes towards the American society? Drawing from stigma theory, we argue that what Chinese students experience when it comes to mask wearing is an exemplar of how stigma is socially constructed by power. Through 30 semi-structured and in-depth phone interviews with Chinese students, we find that Chinese students cope with such stigma through various mechanisms, and most notably, through the counter-narrative of discrediting the American mainstream belief in the usage of masks. However, they harbored these thoughts privately. In addition, we conclude that escalating geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, coupled with the lack of social integration of Chinese students in America, will continue to alienate them, despite the subsequent destigmatization of mask-wearing in America.

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“…Depending on the nature of the challenge, superordinate actors could plausibly satisfy a revisionist simply by elevating them to a higher position (and acceding to demands for concomitant privileges). For example, the United States and others have effectively “promoted” India to the status of a nuclear weapon state by waiving restrictions on nuclear exports and legitimizing India’s possession of nuclear weapons (Smetana, 2020). Superordinate actors can retain their own advantaged positions—though perhaps diluted by the expansion of the elite club—and the ideational and discursive bases of those advantages remain unthreatened.…”

Section: Anarchy Hierarchy and Revisionismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hierarchy, revisionism, and subordinate actors: The TPNW and the subversion of the nuclear order

Egel

Ward

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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Why and how do weak states challenge the status quo? This article builds on analyses of hierarchy in International Relations to develop a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the concept of revisionism. We argue that while weak actors cannot generally directly challenge their position in a stratified hierarchy, they may be able to undermine or subvert the discourses that constitute these hierarchies. This approach is likely to be attractive and feasible under two conditions: when other approaches to reform have been frustrated, and when social and political resources are available to facilitate such subversive challenges. We illustrate this argument by analyzing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a subversive revisionist project. Small states—frustrated by their inability to negotiate meaningful reform through the status quo framework—partnered with civil society and drew upon discursive resources developed during prior subversive revisionist projects in an effort to stigmatize nuclear weapons and subvert the discourses constituting the advantaged positions of those possessing them. While the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is unlikely to directly persuade nuclear weapon states to abandon their arsenals, it could have unpredictable consequences across a related range of hierarchic fields that constitute the status quo order.

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(De-)stigmatising the outsider: nuclear-armed India, United States, and the global nonproliferation order

Cited by 9 publications

References 74 publications

NPT as an antifragile system: How contestation improves the nonproliferation regime

NPT as an antifragile system: How contestation improves the nonproliferation regime

To mask or not to mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic: how Chinese students in America experience and cope with stigma

Hierarchy, revisionism, and subordinate actors: The TPNW and the subversion of the nuclear order

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