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Our most recent podcast: We were able to talk to the Japanese culturalanthropologist Mihara Ryôtarô while he visited Frankfurt in July for a talkon the Coool Japan Initiative [link]. As we have written on K-Pop in the past,we were very interested to talk about this kind of export promotion ofcultural goods as a foreign policy strategy: Do export subsidies of J-Popartifacts really promote Japanese soft power in the region? What are thedangers of promoting certain images of Japanese-ness? And is fried sushireally cool?
Japheth Omojuwa is the Editor of AfricanLiberty.org for Atlas Economic Research Institute United States and also founder and curator of www.omojuwa.com, one of the most popular web pages in Nigeria. As a crucial part of the Occupy Nigeria movement, Japheth consults for local and international organisations and, with well over 42,000 followers on Twitter, has a significant influence on young people. Japheth is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers and well published in local and international media. Currently, he is working on the Green Deal Nigeria project: this is how I got to know him on a panel discussion at the Heinricht-Böll-Stiftung in Berlin, and Japheth immediately agreed to answer some questions for our Blog.
Guerillas win as long as they do not lose, and government forces lose as long as they do not win. In Afghanistan, this adage holds, once again, true. Western civilian and military leaders want us to believe that insurgents and criminals are running out of options. Indeed, after much initial stuttering, NATO has transformed into a veritable counter-insurgency machine, with the United States shouldering most of the burden. Casualties among the Taliban and other enemies of NATO are enormous. Enormous, too, is the coalition of NATO and Afghan troops, approaching half a million soldiers and militia-types.
Europe’s reaction to the recent upheavals in North Africa clearly exposed one thing: The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including its Security and Defence branch (CSDP), were steamrolled by a multitude of overtly national policies. The resulting cacophony of views made a mockery of the aspiration to present a united European position to external players. It also thwarts the claim of the EU being a more credible security actor in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty reforms. While commentators have moaned about a CFSP and CSDP ‘fatigue’ for quite some time now, the likelihood that what used to be the most dynamic EU policy field of the last decade will enter a period of prolonged hibernation never seemed as high...
At least since the 1980s, a scholarly debate on the very meaning of security has structured the field of (Critical) Security Studies to a large extent (see Working Paper #1). Today, many new concept such as human security and societal security are prominent anchors in academic and political debates directing our attention to the non-military aspects of security, in particular to the manifold insecurities people (and not only the state) face. The call for energy security is one prominent example...
When Angela Merkel arrives at the United Nations for the opening of the 62nd session of the General Assembly on Tuesday [25 September] to deliver her first address as German chancellor she will be very well received. Just after two years in power she has already become something like a foreign policy legend...
When one considers the results of social scientific surveys, secularisation in Germany seems to be a more or less linear process of erosion of what is traditionally named religiosity. The percentage of citizens who affirm that they are “religious”, believe in God or otherworldly beings, hope for life after death or participate regularly in the praxis of a religious community has been – by and large – steadily declining for decades. This decline has occurred over the succeeding generations: The younger the generation, the fewer “religious” people in it. But the process of secularisation is apparent not only in this persistent quantitative shrinkage from generation to generation. Above all it also manifests itself – this is the thesis of the article – in the transformation of the habitus formations and contents of faith of the generations. The essence of ongoing secularisation naturally is reflected most clearly in its contemporary state of development which is represented in the youngest adult generation. Therefore the analysis of this generation is particularly interesting for the sociology of religion. But the article does not confine to analyze this generation. After indicating some basic premises of the sociology of generations and the notion of secularisation presupposed in this paper, the succession of generations in Germany is outlined hypothetically, from the so-called generation of ´68 to the youngest adult generation, concluding with some remarks about the progress of secularisation.