The economics of identity: is China the new ‘Japan problem’ for the United States?

Nymalm, Nicola

doi:10.1057/s41268-017-0126-9

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Like other narratives, this story is not only sequential but typically ends with a lesson about what 'we', 'the West', must do to deal with China-either contain the threat or adopt engagement policies to reduce it. A few decades ago, policymakers, journalists and scholars were telling an eerily similar story about Japan's rise (Campbell 1992, 223-243;Nymalm 2017; and see, for example, Friedman and Lebard 1991). These specific narratives about East Asian international politics are structured and empowered through their connections and overlaps with other, more general narratives-notably a realist story about the rise and fall of great powers and how states can rationally deal with such shifts in the distribution of material capabilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Hagström

Gustafsson

2019

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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We are living at a time when people appear to have become more aware of the power of narratives in international politics. Understanding how narratives exercise power is therefore more pertinent than ever. This special issue develops the concept of narrative power for international relations research by focusing on East Asia-the region that has been at the centre of debates about international power shifts since the 1990s. This introduction seeks to elucidate and define four key binary distinctions: (a) narrative power as understood from the perspective of an individualist versus a narrative ontology; (b) narrative power as explanandum versus explanans; (c) narrative power as more prone to continuity or change; and (d) the scholar as a detached observer of narrative power versus the scholar as a narrative entrepreneur and a potential wielder of power. Informed by the individual contributions, the introduction demonstrates how and with what implications research on narrative power can negotiate and traverse these binary distinctions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Hagström

Gustafsson

2019

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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“…121–126). Despite disillusionment after the Tiananmen massacre, the China discourse was characterised by military and economic dangers and opportunities, which meant that the ideological dimension took a back seat (Nymalm 2019 ; Yang and Liu 2012 ). While observers were far from oblivious of the Chinese government’s oppressive rule at home, concerns about the party state’s international ideological influence were more limited.…”

Section: Threats and Their Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

US foreign policy elites and the great rejuvenation of the ideological China threat: The role of rhetoric and the ideologization of geopolitical threats

Winkler

Jerdén

2023

J Int Relat Dev

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Since 2018, US foreign policy elites have portrayed China as the gravest threat to their country. Why was China predominantly cast as an ideological threat, even though other discursive formulations, such as a geopolitical threat, were plausible and available? Existing major IR theories on threat perpcetions struggle to address these questions. In this article, we draw from rhetoric and public legitimation scholarship to argue that the mobilization of adjacent policy debates was key to mainstream the representation of China as an ideological threat. By mobilizing debates on Russia and the soft power and sharp power concepts, a minority view in US foreign policy with a longstanding ambition to get tough on China established a seemingly natural link between liberal internationalism and an ideologically threatening China. Liberal foreign policy elites who originally opposed a realpolitik view of China could now subsume a geopolitical threat into an ideological one reminiscent of US-Soviet Cold War rivalry. This constituted a necessary catalyst to align most foreign policy elites to understand China as the gravest threat to the United States, at a time when China’s capabilities and behaviour, coupled with a deep sense of insecurity regarding America’s place in the world, provided the necessary backdrop.

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“…78 Furthermore, the line of argumentation emerged in the US that Japan was more 'different' than previously assumed, in terms of deviating from the principles of free trade and market capitalism. 79 Its commitment to the liberal order, and the hierarchy within it, seemed ambivalent. New labels such as the 'developmental state' or 'comparative capitalism' were created to define and familiarise Japan in relation to existing economic theory.…”

Section: Encounters With 'Rising Powers'mentioning

confidence: 99%

States of ambivalence: Recovering the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in International Relations

Berenskötter

Nymalm

2020

Rev. Int. Stud.

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This article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of (collective) identity. It shows that this concept is central to poststructuralist logic discussing the political production of discourses of danger and to scholarship on ontological security but remains subdued in their analytical narratives. Making the concept of the Stranger explicit is important, we argue, because it directs attention to ambivalence as a source of anxiety and grasps the unsettling experiences that political strategies of conquest or conversion, including practices of securitisation, respond to. Against this backdrop, the article provides a nuanced reading of the Stanger as a form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity, and outlines three scenarios of how it may be encountered in interstate relations: the phenomenon of ‘rising powers’ from the perspective of the hegemon, the dissolution of enmity (overcoming an antagonistic relationship), and the dissolution of friendship (close allies drifting apart). Aware that recovering the concept is not simply an academic exercise but may feed into how the term is used in political discourse and how practitioners deal with ‘strange encounters’, we conclude by pointing to alternative readings of the Stranger/strangeness and the value of doing so.

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The economics of identity: is China the new ‘Japan problem’ for the United States?

Cited by 12 publications

References 46 publications

Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Narrative power: how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

US foreign policy elites and the great rejuvenation of the ideological China threat: The role of rhetoric and the ideologization of geopolitical threats

States of ambivalence: Recovering the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in International Relations

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