Journal articles on the topic 'Corporations, International; Imperialism'

Socialists at the turn of the century explained modern imperialism as an attempt to escape the crisis of monopoly capitalism. “Super-profits” that could be secured in the periphery, according to Lenin, were necessary to offset declining rates of return in the advanced economies. Today, radical theorists stress the role of the multinational corporations in accounting for neocolonialism. If great national power does produce material benefits for foreign investors, this should be apparent in two cases: the experience of British capitalists in the “high age of imperialism,“ 1870–1913, and the operations of U.S. multinational corporations abroad after World War II. But rates of return on foreign investments have not been significantly different in the developed and less developed regions of the world—a finding that is relevant not only for theories of imperialism but also for understanding development and modernization, the operation of the multinational corporation, and international capital markets.

In 1964, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote an essay entitled "Notes on the Theory of Imperialism" for a festschrift in honor of the sixty-fifth birthday of the great Polish Marxist economist Michał Kalecki.… [T]he essay offered the first major analysis of multinational corporations within Marxian theory. Parts of it were incorporated into Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital in 1966, two years after Baran's death. Yet for all that book's depth, "Notes on the Theory of Imperialism" provided a more complete view of their argument on the growth of multinationals. In October and November 1969, Harry Magdoff and Sweezy wrote their article "Notes on the Multinational Corporation," picking up where Baran and Sweezy had left off. That same year, Magdoff published his landmark The Age of Imperialism, which systematically extended the analysis of the U.S. economy into the international domain.… In the analyses of Baran, Sweezy, and Magdoff, as distinct from the dominant liberal perspective, the multinational corporation was the product of the very same process of concentration and centralization of capital that had created monopoly capital itself.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

AbstractDuring the last decade, we have seen an increased opposition to globalization. Within this wave of criticism, firms and more specifically multinational corporations have been major targets, accused of multiple wrongdoings, such as social dumping, fiscal evasion, job cuts, trade deficits, abuses of power, and environmental damages. In many respects, this debate echoes the one that took place during the 1970s with respect to oil shocks, de-industrialization, and imperialism. At that time, several international organizations, such as the OECD, ECOSOC, ILO, and the European Community started to address the issue of multinationals and international investments, and advocated for the creation of guidelines to regulate their activities. The following paper explores the reactions of Swiss multinationals to these attempts, as well as their strategies for protecting their latitude in conducting business. Relying on archival material of the Swiss Union of Commerce and Industry and of the Federal Archives, this paper shows how the biggest companies in the pharmaceutical, machine, and food processing industries—all of them still being global players —decided to create a task force to deal with these emerging regulations at the international level.

The early part of the sixties witnessed a rapid decolonization of several parts of Africa even though many have argued that these were mere placations otherwise referred to as flag independence. The seventies and thereafter have witnessed the re-colonisation of African States or in proper terms, the neo-colonisation of Africa by Western Powers. That African States since their qualified independence have been in bondage was never in doubt. Subtly but seriously, the Western Powers through its hydraheaded multinational corporations, in conjuction with international institutions and conventions, have taken over the affairs of African States ranging from politics through economics to culture. While these were going on, the Organization of African Unity stood aloof concerned with nothing in particular or perhaps helpless or on another note used as a tool by Western imperialism. It is the contention of this paper that Africa was neo-colonized by Western Powers mainly because there was no collective resistance that should have been envisaged and given by the Organization for African Unity. The formation, structure, financing and the objectives of OAU at the outset were inadequate to foresee and attack Western surreptitious moves to further imperialism in the seventies and beyond. Consequently, the OAU not only folded its arms while Western perpetrators went away with their imperialistic loot but was also consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirecly, covertly or overtly used in the course of the neocolonisation of African States.

In this most recent era of transnational movements of labor, commodity, capital, and information, distinctions among cultures and conditions of exile, diaspora, nationality, ethnicity, and race are both elusive and in need of elucidation. That need is particularly strong when such cultures and conditions are articulated in and through mass media. Studies of globalization and transnational media corporations in communications and media studies have rarely examined the continuing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. In turn, studies of postcoloniality, whose strongest disciplinary connections have been to literature, history, and anthropology, have been noticeably reluctant to address the realm of mass-mediated culture. Yet postcoloniality is routinely animated by the political economy and representational practices of mass-media technologies. Consider how the following mass mediated representations weave a tangled web of postcolonial relations. On the one hand, the nuclear bomb-toting terrorists of the “Crimson Jihad” in the recent blockbuster movie True Lies represent “peoples of the ‘Middle East’ ” by violently condensing Armenians, Turks, Lebanese, and Azeris along with, for example, Palestinians, Libyans, and Iranians. On the other hand, Armenian and Azeri war tactics in Karabakh are partly driven by international media coverage while that same war is consumed through mass media in Long Island and Los Angeles. To complicate the picture even further, Los Angeles-based institutions of mass media are driven by that city’s surplus labor pool of working-class immigrants from the “South.”

What type of capitalism do we live in today? My answer to this question draws upon two interrelated lines of argument. Firstly, I will argue that we inhabit an epoch of global capitalism. The precursors of this kind of capitalism originated from the late nineteenth century when the development of telegraph networks, modern transport systems and world time zones provided a global template for industrialisation and Western imperialism. From about 1980 a confluence of global events and processes bought a fully-fledged global capitalism into being. These included the collapse of Fordist Keynesianism, national Keynesianism and Soviet Communism along with First, Second and Third World demarcations; the international proliferation of neo-liberal policy regimes; the growth of transnational corporations in all economic sectors; the predominance of financialisation and the reconstitution of global workforces. Secondly, I will argue that the shift from organic surface energy to underground fossil energy intertwined the time of the earth with the time of human history as nature was being instrumentalised as a resource for humanity. Understanding the capitalist relations of power involved here requires that we rethink the emergence of industrial capitalism in the historical context of a world system built upon unequal socio-ecological exchange between core and periphery. Today, global capitalism has intensified the anthropogenic feedback loops associated with CO2 emissions and climate change and universalised the organisational frameworks of profit extraction and socio-ecological destruction. I refer here to the transnational systems of fossil fuel capitalism along with their interlinkages with financialisation and advertising/commodity fetishism. From the preceding lines of argument I will briefly outline the intra-capitalist and planetary-ecological crises out of which transnational coalitions of opposition might emerge.

This article tackles the evolution of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation international distribution strategies at the intersection of the contemporary television landscape, by providing a context and definition for Canadian content (CanCon) rules, so as to consider more recent debates on the positioning of foreign streaming services in Canada in relation to existing broadcasting companies. The aim is to problematize media policies, by outlining the present state of the debate and updating the conversation to include global streaming TV players. Key questions are explored, such as whether CanCon rules are outdated forms of cultural protectionism or still represent viable answers to the risks of media imperialism.

Haiti’s new Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation.By JUSTIN PODUR. Pluto Press, 2012. $29.95Reviewed by Natali DownerThe controversial book Haiti’s new Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation is a significant contribution to current discussions around globalisation, political economy, development, post-colonialism, and human rights. Podur’s work provides welcome insight and a critical perspective on the struggle for sovereignty in modern day Haiti. The author takes the reader through Haiti’s political history, beginning with the slave revolution of 1804, which established Haiti as the world’s first independent black Republic. The historical account grounds the reader in Haiti’s reality—the ongoing battle for economic and political sovereignty within its borders. Since its independence, Podur argues, the successful slave revolt in Haiti has been an ontological challenge to those who would seek to impose colonialism; it is the challenge they posed in 1804 and today.Podur sections the book into historical eras, including the Duvalier dictatorship followed by Haiti’s popular movement and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which act as signposts for his study. In Podur’s analysis of the second and pivotal coup against Aristide in 2004, he argues that the new dictatorship was imposed and solidified under the control of the U.S., Canada, France and later, the United Nations. Specifically, under the guise of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (the new iteration of the “White Man’s Burden”,) western countries employed the old colonial pretext in order to “overthrow Haiti’s elected government and replace it with an internationally constructed dictatorship.” Drawing on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s concept of dictatorship, as the use of violence and centralization of power, Podur adds “impunity” to the description as it characterizes how violations by the regime and its supporters go unpunished. Podur categorises the new international variety of dictatorship as a “laboratory experiment in a new kind of imperialism.”Podur discusses the contradictory role of the domestic and international media as contributing to the success of the coup. He argues that the media misrepresented the details surrounding the kidnapping and replacement of a democratically elected prime minister with the dictatorship of the United Nations. He describes the “media disinformation loop” as part of the coup infrastructure by shaping beliefs and actions. Podur’s work is an attempt to publicize an alternative to corrupt mainstream reporting.The media did not question the legitimacy of the coup regime or the United Nations’ Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Podur argues that the occupation of Haiti by the MINUSTAH occurred under peculiar justifications. He reports that, “in Haiti an internationalized military solution is being offered for what even the UN admitted were problems of poverty and social crime that occur in many places.” He argues that violence and murder rates are higher in other countries, including the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. The mainstream rationale for UN occupation in Haiti has evaded inquiry.Podur’s analysis of the coup extends to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the new dictatorship. In Haiti, Podur argues, NGOs perform tasks that belong in the hands of a functioning public service, accountable to the people. Instead, NGOs operate in the interests of their donor countries—“offering wealthy countries a morally responsible way of subcontracting the sovereignty of the nations they exploit.” Making NGOs “less non-governmental and more ‘over governmental’” and revealing the determinant role of external intervention in corrupting sovereignty.NGOs are responsible for the bulk of disaster response in Haiti. Podur’s analysis of the earthquake of 2010 reveals a stunning account of how well-meaning donors are part of a feedback loop that (in part) finances a corrupt system. This system of local elites, international enterprises, and NGOs acts with impunity as they create and reinforce vulnerabilities because funds are controlled by western technocrats and corporations (particularly in times of crisis). Rather than geographic factors, Podur argues that social factors are the major cause of Haiti’s horrific death toll following disasters. The decapitation of Haiti’s government and the subsequent program cuts demobilizes the public service while it enables the rise of the “republic of NGOs” and the UN Dictatorship. As Haiti lacks the sovereignty to orchestrate its own disaster response, the failure to rebuild after the earthquake marks the failure of the new dictatorship and not the people of Haiti.Podur illustrates the character of the new dictatorship allowing readers to understand the truly gruesome nature of the post-coup occupiers. Podur’s report leaves the reader spinning from accounts of murder and corruption; page after page the reader experiences Haiti’s grim reality in the new imperialist regime. While the lists of events in the book become disorienting to read, they serve to demonstrate the brutality of actions performed by western nations, the Haitian elite, and armed factions.In this book Podur argues that Haiti is engaged in a historical struggle for democracy against external control. Podur’s work on Haiti reveals how a multilateral violation of sovereignty is organized and carried out, and exposes the “new face of dictatorship in the twenty-first century global order.” However, the larger project of this book suggests a call to action. Podur recounts the illegitimacy of the occupation and its atrocities so that widespread recognition can be achieved and policies changed. Podur challenges us to consider what it truly means to help Haiti, to face the consequences of our “do-good” attempts at aid and instead aim to assist Haitians to reclaim national sovereignty.Work CitedTrouillot, Michel-Rolph. Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990. Print.~NATALI DOWNER is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her research explores the contradictions of capitalism as expressed in the twin crisis of peak oil and climate change.

Many analyses of U.S. foreign policy after September 11 have rested upon readings of the U.S. as a traditional imperialist power. In so doing, the constructions of Al Qaeda as a decentralized corporation and a virtual network are often ignored. Corporate and network constructions place less stress on conventional threats to the nation-state and instead portray terrorism in distinctively post-Fordist terms. This in turn helps explain the short-lived and partial patriotic responses to the terrorist attacks, as well as the contradictory place of race in portrayals of the threat facing the U.S. Together these discourses point to new ways of thinking about U.S. nationalism and terrorism in the twenty-first century.

This text analyzes the theoretical and political foundations of the rise process, in Brazil, of forces called neoconservative, neoliberal, extreme right or, simply, the new right, in order to understand their most evident impacts on the construction of educational policy in the country, along with a vision of political economy subsumed to the financial logic and interest of the corporations that control the circulation of capital. It takes, as a paradigmatic example of expression of the conceptions of the new right, the most recent ideopolitical context that legitimized and legitimizes the current federal government. It is supported by both academic bibliography and videographic production, as a way to promote the interface between two sources of opinion formation in the dynamic world of analysis of facts and concepts that produces political ideology and impacts the configuration of policies social.ResumoEste texto analisa os fundamentos teórico-políticos do processo de ascensão, no Brasil, de forças denominadas neoconservadoras, neoliberais, de extrema direita ou, simplesmente, da nova direita, para fins de compreender seus impactos mais evidentes na construção da política educacional no país, em par com uma visão de economia política subsumida à lógica financeira e de interesse das corporações controladoras da circulação do capital. Toma, como exemplo paradigmático de expressão das concepções da nova direita, o contexto ideopolítico mais recente que legitimou e legitima o atual governo federal. Apoia-se tanto em bibliografia acadêmica quanto em produção videográfica, como forma de promover interface de duas fontes de formação de opinião do dinâmico mundo de análise de fatos e concepções que produz ideologia política e impacta a configuração das políticas sociais.Resumen Este texto analiza los fundamentos teóricos y políticos del proceso de ascenso, en Brasil, de fuerzas llamadas neoconservadoras, neoliberales, de extrema derecha o, simplemente, la nueva derecha, para comprender sus impactos más evidentes en la construcción de la política educativa en el país, junto con una visión de economía política subsumida a la lógica financiera y el interés de las corporaciones que controlan la circulación de capital. Toma, como ejemplo paradigmático de expresión de las concepciones de la nueva derecha, el contexto ideopolítico más reciente que ha dado legitimad al gobierno federal actual. Está respaldado tanto por la bibliografía académica como por la producción videográfica, como una forma de promover la interfaz entre dos fuentes de formación de opinión en el mundo dinámico de análisis de hechos y conceptos que producen ideología política e impacta la configuración de las políticas sociales.Palavras-chave: Educação brasileira, Ideologia política, Nova direita, Políticas educacionais.Keywords: Brazilian education, Political ideology, New right, Educational policies.Palabras claves: Educación brasileña, Ideología política, Nueva derecha, Políticas educacionales.ReferencesAMIN, Samir. Geopolítica del imperialismo contemporâneo. In: E. Borgiani, Elisabete, Carlos Montaño. (orgs.). Coyuntura actual, latinoamericana y mundial: tendência y movimentos. (Biblioteca Latinoamericana de Servicio Social . Série Antologías, v. 14). São Paulo: Cortez, 2009, p. 206-252.BATISTA, Eraldo Leme; ORSO, Paulino José; LUCENA, Carlos (Orgs.). Escola sem partido ou a escola da mordaça e do partido único a serviço do capital. Uberlândia: Navegando Publicações, 2019. Disponível em: https://www.editoranavegando.com/livro-escola-sem-partido.BIANCHETTI, Lucídio; SGUISSARDI, Valdemar. Da universidade à commoditycidade – ou de como e quando, se a educação/formação é sacrificada no altar do mercado, o futuro da universidade se situa em algum lugar do passado. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2017.BOBBIO, N. Ideologia. In: BOBBIO, N.; MATEUCCI, N.; PASQUINO, G. (orgs.). Dicionário de Política. V.I. 11 ed. Brasília, DF: Editora da UnB, 1998.CASIMIRO, Flávio Henrique Calheiros. A nova direita: aparelhos de ação política e ideológica no Brasil contemporâneo. São Paulo: expressão Popular, 2018.DARDOT, Pierre; LAVAL, Christian. A nova razão do mundo – ensaio sobre a sociedade neoliberal. Trad.: Mariana Echalar. 1 ed. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2016.DOWBOR, Ladislau. A era do capital improdutivo: Por que oito famílias têm mais riqueza do que a metade da população do mundo? São Paulo: Outras Palavras/Autonomia Literária, 2017.DOWBOR, Ladislau. Governança corporativa: o caótico poder dos gigantes financeiros. Pesquisa e Debate, PUC-SP, Vol. 27., N. 2 (50), dez., 2016. p. 25-46.FRIGOTTO, Gaudêncio (org.) Escola “sem” partido: esfinge que ameaça a educação e a sociedade brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ, LPP, 2017. Disponível em: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_ptI_xxOGFMUM2RnJYNjdlRXM/viewHARVEY, David. O neoliberalismo: história e implicações. Tradução Adail Sobral e Maria Stela Gonçalves. São Paulo: Loyola, 2014.LACERDA, Marina Basso. O novo conservadorismo brasileiro. Porto Alegre: Zouk, 2019.LANDER, Edgardo. Conocimiento para que? Conocimiento para quién? Reflexiones sobre la universidad y la geopolítica de los saberes hegemónicos. In: PALERMO, Zulma (comp.). Des/decolonizar la universidad. 1 ed. (Coleccíon El desprendimiento). Buenos Aires: Del Signo, 2015. ps. 41-67.MARX, Karl. (2013). O capital: crítica da economia política. Livro I: o processo de produção do capital. Tradução de Rubens Enderle. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.MASCARO, Alysson Leandro. Estado e forma política. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.MENEGAT, Marildo. Depois do fim do mundo - a crise da modernidade e a barbárie. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Damará; FAPERJ, 2003.NOGUEIRA, Heryka C. Privatização mercantil da educação superior em contexto de regulação transnacional – o caso FAMA/KROTON do Amapá. Brasil. (Tese de Doutorado). Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Nove de Julho, São Paulo: 2020.OGAMA, Danilo Ferraz de Oliveira As desventuras da sociedade pós-industrial: as falácias da visão determinista do desenvolvimento tecnológico. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Programa de Pós-graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Curitiba, 2019.SADER, Emir (org.). 10 anos de governos pós-neoliberais no Brasil: Lula e Dilma. São Paulo, SP: Boitempo; Rio de Janeiro, RJ: FLACSO Brasil, 2013.SAMPAIO DA SILVA, Evaldo. Os três movimentos da modernidade. Ethic@ - An international Journal for Moral Philosophy, Florianópolis, v. 12, n. 2, p. 321-345, dez. 2013. ISSN 1677-2954. Disponível em: <https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/ethic/article/view/1677-2954.2013v12n2p321>. Acesso em: 09 abr. 2020. doi:https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2013v12n2p321.SANTOS, Eduardo. Da geopolítica das potências à geopolítica do conhecimento: financeirização e epistemologias de mercado na educação superior brasileira. Revista Lusófona de Educação, v. 47, n. 48, abr.junh., 2020, s/p (no prelo)SOUZA, Jessé. A elite do atraso – da escravidão à Lava Jato. Rio de Janeiro: Leya, 2017.SOUZA, Jessé. A guerra contra o Brasil - como os EUA se uniram a uma organização para destruir o sonho brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Estação Brasil, 2020.VALE, Maria Ribeiro do. Matizes do pensamento político norte-americano na virada conservadora de 1970. Cad. CRH, Salvador, v. 23, n. 59, p. 369-383, agosto de 2010. Disponível em <http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-49792010000200011&lng=en&nrm=iso>. acesso em 09 de abril de 2020. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-49792010000200011 TANNER, Lisa. Allan Bloom. Disponível em: <http://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/nadams/educ692/Bloom.html>. Acesso em: 09 de abr. de 2020WATSON, Adam. A evolução da sociedade internacional – uma análise histórica comparativa. Trad.: René Loncan. Brasília, DF: Editora da UnB, 2004.e4650144

The process of globalization is an important phenomenon that causes changes in the way of life, thinking and behavior of human beings. Undoubtedly, this process of change has revealed the necessity of rethinking concepts and phenomena in social sciences and in the discipline of international relations. The main purpose of this study; “Has the process of globalization changed the phenomena of imperialism and hegemony, and if so, what is the extent of this change?” to analyze the problem. The basic assumption of the study; With the globalization process, the phenomena of imperialism and hegemony have undergone a large-scale structural change. The basis of this assumption is that the traditional state-centered perspective is insufficient to explain the phenomena of imperialism and hegemony due to the changes created by the globalization process. It can be said that especially non-state actors such as multinational companies are leading this change. Considering their annual budgets, number of employees, and most importantly, their effectiveness and decisive role in international relations, it can be predicted that in the medium and long term, imperial or hegemon structures may be multinational corporations rather than states. Multinational companies will make this structural transformation not alone, but together with developed countries with a possible foresight. In this context, it can be said that other non-state actors, especially multinational companies, will have a share as a new and powerful actor in shaping the phenomena of imperialism and hegemony that have been reduced to states.

Based on interviews with Vietnamese factory workers we discuss the impact Covid lockdowns had on their lives and illuminate how fragile their economic circumstances are in general. Both the government and major international corporations, such as Samsung and Nike, took extraordinary steps to keep workers on factory floors when covid infections started spreading in 2020. The government and businesses pressed laborers to work, sleep, and eat in their factories to stop the spread of the virus and to keep production lines moving. There was a determined push to get people vaccinated. It wasn’t just the Vietnamese government that tried to get jabs in arms; ninety U.S. corporate executives urged the U.S. government to speed vaccine delivery to the country. Japanese, South Korean, and other Southeast Asian companies located in Vietnam also joined in these efforts. The purported reason was that supply chains had been disrupted by covid and exporters feared they would not have products on the shelves for the coming holiday season. We argue that focusing on supply chain disruptions obscures the fact that what is being transferred between developing countries and those in the core is not just television sets and tennis shoes but human labor power. It is a form of economic imperialism in which countries no longer conquer another nation to extract wealth but operate through international corporations unfettered by ties to any specific country. The Vietnamese government offers international corporations significant tax breaks and other benefits to set up shop in industrial zones. Their profit margins are high and come at the expense of workers, who must work overtime and enlist other family members in their labor force to survive. We conclude by identifying actions the Vietnamese government could take to alleviate the plight of factory workers.

Nigeria is a petro-state with a vast shadow economy and shadow political apparatuses, in which the lines between public and private, state and market, government and organized crime are blurred and porous. Since the oil industry in the Niger delta became commercially viable in 1958, virtually every inch of the region has been touched by international oil corporations. As a result, a multiplicity of overlapping conflicts have evolved: From the new states and local government areas bankrolled by the oil revenue process, to reconfigured spaces of chieftainship and ethnicity in which a panoply of political movements struggle for the control over territory, to the violent spaces of the creeks controlled by insurgents and federal military forces.

Murray Forman’s text The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop provides insightful commentary on the workings of and relationship between place and space. To highlight the difference of scale between these two parameters, he writes that, “place defines the immediate locale of human interaction in the particular, whereas space is the expanse of mobile trajectories through which subjects pass in their circulation between or among distinct and varied places” (25). This statement reflects Doreen Massey’s earlier observation from her book Space, Place, and Gender that “one view of a place is as a particular articulation” of the spatial (5). These descriptions clarify how human action shapes, and is shaped by, what Forman describes as the “more narrowly circumscribed parameters” of place (25) and the broader realm of space. Clearly, these two terms describe interconnected components that are socially constructed and dynamic: that is, they operate at different scales but are constructed in time, constantly reshaped by human action and perception. “Space and time are inextricably interwoven,” states Massey. She continues: “It is not that the interrelations between objects occur in space and time; it is these relationships themselves which create/define space and time” (261). If place and space represent different scales of social interaction and space and time are interconnected, place and time must be linked as well.While this indicates that human experience and representation operate on different scales, it is important to note that these two factors are also interrelated. As Stuart Hall writes, “[I]t is only through the way in which we represent and imagine ourselves that we come to know how we are constituted and who we are” (473). There is no objective experience, only that which is subjectively represented through various means. Through depictions of these relationships between place, space, and time, rap music shapes listeners’ comprehension of these parameters. DJs, MCs, producers, and other creative artists express personal observations through the influence of both the local and global, the past and present. In rap lyrics and their musical accompaniment, countries, cities, neighbourhoods, and even specific government housing developments inform the music, but the identities of these places and spaces are not fixed – for the performers or for the audience. They are more than the backdrop for what happens, inanimate structures or coordinates of latitude and longitude. Their dynamic nature, and their representation in music, serves to continually redefine “how we are constituted and who we are” (473).In MC Solaar’s Léve-toi et Rap from his 2001 album Cinquième as and his song Nouveau Western, from 1994’s Prose Combat, this is demonstrated in two very different ways. Léve-toi et Rap, a personal history told in the first person, clearly demonstrates both American hip-hop lineage and the transnational influences of Solaar’s upbringing. This song serves as an example of the adoption of American musical and lyrical techniques as means through which personally empowering, often place-based stories are told. In Nouveau Western, the narrative demonstrates the negative effects of globalization through this story about a geographically and temporally transported American cowboy. This track employs musical materials in a way that reflects the more critical lyrical commentary on the repercussions of American cultural and economic power. Through the manner of his storytelling, and through the stories themselves, MC Solaar explicitly demonstrates his own agency in representing, and thus constructing the meaning of, dynamic place and space as they are defined from these two perspectives.As a Paris-based French rapper, MC Solaar often makes his affiliation to this geographic focal point significant in his lyrics. This is especially clear in Léve-toi et Rap, in which Parisian banlieues (HLM government housing projects), nightclubs, and other places figure prominently in the text. From the lyrics, one learns a great deal about this rapper and his background: MC Solaar was born in Senegal, but his parents brought him to France when he was young (MC Solaar, “Léve-toi et Rap”; Petetin, 802, 805). He grew up struggling with the isolation and social problems of the banlieues and the discrimination he faced as an immigrant. He began rapping, established a musical career, and now encourages others to rap as a means of making something constructive out of a challenging situation. In the excerpt below, MC Solaar explains these origins and the move to the banlieues (Solaar, “Lève-toi et rap;” All translations by the author).Lève-toi et rap elaborates on the connection between the local and global in rap music, and between place, space, and time. The lyrics and music represent these properties in part by appropriating American rap’s stylistic practices. The introductory chorus incorporates sampled lyrics of the American artists Lords of the Underground, the Beastie Boys, Nas, and Redman (Various Contributors, “‘Lève-toi et rap’ Direct Sample of Vocals/Lyrics,” whosampled.com.). A bassline originally recorded by the funk group The Crusaders grounds the musical accompaniment that begins with the first verse (partially printed above), in which MC Solaar begins to depict his own place and space as he has experienced it temporally.In this chorus, the first sample is “I remember way back in the days on my block” from Lords of the Underground’s song Tic-Toc. This leads to “Oh My God” and “Ah, Ah, Ah,” both samples from Q-Tip’s contribution to the Beastie Boys’ song Get It Together. “I Excel,” which appears in Nas’s It Ain’t Hard to Tell comes next. The last sample, “Who Got the Funk,” is from Can’t Wait by Redman (Lords of the Underground, “Tic-Tic;” Beastie Boys and Q-Tip, “Get It Together;” Nas, “It Ain’t Hard to Tell;” The Crusaders, “The Well’s Gone Dry”).Scratching begins the introductory chorus (printed below), which ends with a voice announcing “MC Solaar.” At this point, the sampled bassline from The Crusaders’ 1974 song The Well’s Gone Dry begins.[Scratching]I remember back in the days on my block... Lords of the UndergroundOh my God... Ah, Ah, Ah... Beastie Boys and Q-TipI excel… NasWho got the funk... RedmanMC Solaar[Crusaders sample begins] The rap samples all date from 1994, the year Solaar released his well-received album Prose Combat and most are strategically placed: the first sample originated in the last verse of Tic-Toc, the Q-Tip samples in the middle are from the middle of Get It Together, and the last sample, “I Excel,” is from the first line of It Ain’t Hard to Tell. As Lève-toi et rap continues, MC Solaar’s statement of the song title itself replaces the iteration “MC Solaar” of the first chorus. In a sense, “Lève-toi et rap” becomes the last sample of the chorus. Through these American references, Solaar demonstrates an affiliation with the place in which rap is commonly known to have originally coalesced. For French rappers consciously working to prove their connection to rap’s lineage, such demonstrations are useful (Faure and Garcia, 81-82). Achieved by sampling music and lyrics from 1974 and 1994 from sources that are not all that obvious to a casual listener, Solaar spatially connects his work to the roots of rap (Shusterman, 214). These particular samples also highlight a spatial relationship to particular styles of rap that represent place and space in particular ways. Nas and Lords of the Underground, for instance, have added to the discourse on street credibility and authenticity, while Q-tip has provided commentary on social and political issues. MC Solaar’s own story widens the parameters for illustrating these concepts, as he incorporates the personally significant places such as Senegal, Chad, and the Saint Denis banlieue to establish street credibility on a transnational scale; the lyrics also describe serious social and political issues, including the “skinheads” he encountered while living in Paris. Dynamic place is clear throughout all of this, as everything occurring in these places is meaningful in part because of the unavoidable relationship with the passing of time – Solaar’s birth, his upbringing, and his success occurred through his choices and social interactions in specific places.Looking more closely at the representation of place and time, Lève-toi et rap is less than straightforward. As discussed previously, some of the vocal samples are rearranged, demonstrating purposeful alteration of pre-recorded material; in contrast, the use of a repeated funk bassline sample during a clear narrative of Solaar’s life juxtaposes a linear story with a non-linear musical accompaniment. To this, MC Solaar made a contemporary textual contribution to later choruses, with the title of the song added as the chorus’s last line. Such manipulation in the context of this first-person narrative to express this movement supports the conclusion that, far from being a victim of political and economic forces, MC Solaar has used them to his advantage. After all, the title of the song itself, Lève-toi et rap, translates roughly to “get up and rap.”In addition to manipulating the materials of American rap and funk for this purpose, Solaar’s use of verlan, a type of slang used in the banlieues, brings another level of locality to Lève-toi et rap. The use of verlan brings the song’s association with French banlieue culture closer: by communicating in a dialect fluently understood by relatively few, rappers ensure that their message will be understood best by those who share the constellation of social and temporal relations of these housing developments (Milon, 75). Adding verlan to other slang and to unique grammatical rules, the rap of the banlieues is to some extent in its own language (Prévos, “Business” 902-903).Referring to MC Solaar’s 1994 album Prose Combat, André Prévos observed that this material “clearly illustrates the continuity of this tradition, all the while adding an identifiable element of social and personal protest as well as an identifiable amount of ‘signifying’ also inspired by African American hip-hip lyrics” (Prévos, “Postcolonial” 43). While it is clear at this point that this is also true for Lève-toi et rap from Cinquème as, Nouveau Western from Prose Combat demonstrates continuity in different way. To start, the samples used in this song create a more seamless texture. A sample from the accompaniment to Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie and Clyde from 1967 undergirds the song, providing a French pop reference to a story about an American character (Various Contributors, “Nouveau Western” whosampled.com). The bassline from Bonnie and Clyde is present throughout Nouveau Western, while the orchestral layer from the sample is heard during sections of the verses and choruses. Parts of the song also feature alto saxophone samples that provide continuity with the jazz-influenced character of many songs on this album.The contrasts with Lève-toi et rap continue with the lyrical content. Rather than describing his own process of acquiring knowledge and skill as he moved in time from place to place, in Nouveau Western MC Solaar tells the story of a cowboy named “Harry Zona” who was proud and independent living in Arizona, hunting for gold with his horse, but who becomes a victim in contemporary Paris. In the fabled west, the guns he carries and his method of transportation facilitate his mission: Il erre dans les plaines, fier, solitaire. Son cheval est son partenaire [He wanders the plains, proud, alone. His horse is his partner.]. After suddenly being transported to modern-day Paris, he orders a drink from an “Indian,” at a bistro and “scalps” the foam off, but this is surely a different kind of person and practice than Solaar describes Harry encountering in the States (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).After leaving the bistro, Harry is arrested driving his stagecoach on the highway and shut away by the authorities in Fresnes prison for his aberrant behaviour. His pursuit of gold worked for him in the first context, but the quest for wealth advanced in his home country contributed to the conditions he now faces, and which MC Solaar critiques, later in the song. He raps, Les States sont comme une sorte de multinationale / Elle exporte le western et son monde féudal / Dicte le bien, le mal, Lucky Luke et les Dalton [The States are a kind of multinational”/ “They export the western and its feudal way/ Dictate the good the bad, Lucky Luke and the Daltons] (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).Harry seems to thrive in the environment portrayed as the old west: as solitary hero, he serves as a symbol of the States’ independent spirit. In the nouveau far west [new far west] francophone comic book characters Lucky Luke and the Daltons sont camouflés en Paul Smith’s et Wesson [are camouflaged in Paul Smith’s and Wesson], and Harry is not equipped to cope with this confusing combination. He is lost as he negotiates le système moderne se noie l’individu [the modern system that drowns the individual]. To return to Bonnie and Clyde, these ill-fated and oft-fabled figures weren’t so triumphant either, and in Gainsbourg’s song, they are represented by 1960s French pop rather than by even a hint of local 1930s musical traditions. “Harry Zona” is not the only person whose story unfolds through the lens of another culture.While Solaar avoids heavy use of verlan or other Parisian slang in this song, he does use several American cultural references, some of which I have already mentioned. In addition, the word “western” refers to western movies, but it also serves as another term for the United States and its cultural exports. “Hollywood” is another term for the west, and in this context MC Solaar warns his listeners to question this fictional setting. Following his observation that John Wayne looks like Lucky Luke, “well groomed like an archduke,” he exclaims Hollywood nous berne, Hollywood berne! [Hollywood fooled us! Hollywood fools!]. This is followed by, on dit gare au gorille, mais gare à Gary Cooper [as they say watch out for the gorilla, watch out for Gary Cooper]. Slick characters like the ones Gary Cooper played have ultimately served as cultural capital that has generated economic capital for the “multinational” States that Solaar describes. As Harry moves “epochs and places,” he discovers that this sort of influence, now disguised in fashion-forward clothing, is more influential than his Smith and Wesson of the old west (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).It is important to note that this narrative is described with the language of the cultural force that it critiques. As Geoffrey Baker writes, “MC Solaar delves into the masterpieces and linguistic arsenal of his colonizers in order to twist the very foundations of their linguistic oppression against them” (Baker, 241). These linguistic – and cultural – references facilitate this ironic critique of the “new Far West”: Harry suffers in the grip of a more sophisticated gold rush (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).Lève-toi et rap transforms musical and verbal language as well, but the changes are more overt. Even though the musical samples are distinctly American, they are transformed, and non-American places of import to MC Solaar are described with heavy use of slang. This situates the song in American and French cultural territory while demonstrating Solaar’s manipulation of both. He is empowered by the specialized expression of place and space, and by the loud and proud references to a dynamic upbringing, in which struggle culminates in triumph.Empowerment through such manipulation is an attractive interpretation, but because this exercise includes the transformation of a colonizer’s language, it ultimately depends on understanding rap as linked to some extent to what Murray Forman and Tricia Rose describe as “Western cultural imperialism” (Rose, 19; Forman, 21). Both Rose and Forman point out that rap has benefitted from what Rose describes as “the disproportionate exposure of U.S. artists around the world,” (Rose, 19) even though this music has provided an avenue through which marginalized groups have articulated social and political concerns (Rose, 19; Forman 21). The “transnational circulation of contemporary culture industries” that Forman describes (21) has benefitted multinational corporations, but it has also provided new means of expression for those reached by this global circulation. Additionally, this process has engendered a sense of community around the world among those who identify with rap’s musical and lyrical practices and content; in many cases, rap’s connection to the African diaspora is a significant factor in the music’s appeal. This larger spatial connection occurs alongside more locally place-based connections. Lève-toi et rap clearly manifests this sense of simultaneously negotiating one’s role as a global citizen and as an individual firmly grounded in the place and space of local experience.Even though rap has been a music of resistance to hegemonic social and economic forces for people around the world, it is nonetheless important to recognize that the forces that have disseminated this music on a global scale have contributed to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Working within this system is almost always unavoidable for rappers, many of whom criticize these conditions in their music, but depend on these transnational corporations for their success. Paul A. Silverstein writes that “hip-hop formations themselves, while enunciating an explicit critique of both state interventionism and the global market, have directly benefited from both and, to be sure, simultaneously desire their end and their continuation” (47-48). This is very clear in Nouveau Western, which Silverstein writes “portrayed neo-liberalism as a ‘new Far West’ where credit cards replace Remingtons.” (48) That this critique has reached a large audience in the francophone world and elsewhere highlights the irony of the situation: under the current system of popular musical production and circulation, such material often must reach its audience through complicity with the very system it denounces. This view on the mixture of the local and global presented in these songs illustrates this confusing situation, but from another perspective, the representation of social interaction on varying scales connects to the factors that have contributed to rap since its inception. Local places and geographically broad spatial connections have been articulated in constantly changing ways through musical and lyrical sampling, original lyrical references, and the uses that creators, listeners, and the industry enact vis-à-vis global rap culture. Whether revealed through clear references to American rap that facilitate a personal narrative or through a more complicated critique of American culture, MC Solaar’s songs Lève-toi et rap and Nouveau Western expose some accomplishments of a French rapper whose work reveals personal agency both outside and within the “multinational” United States. ReferencesBaker, Geoffrey. “Preachers, Gangsters, Pranksters: MC Solaar and Hip-Hop as Overt and Covert Revolt.” The Journal of Popular Culture 44 (2011): 233-54.Beastie Boys and Q-Tip. “Get It Together.” Ill Communication. Grand Royal Records, 1994. CD.Faure, Sylvia, and Marie-Carmen Garcia. “Conflits de Valeurs et Générations.” Culture Hip Hop Jeunes des Cités et Politiques Publiques. Paris: La Dispute SNÉDIT, 2005. 69-83. Forman, Murray. “Space Matters: Hip-Hop and the Spatial Perspective.” The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2002. 1- 34. Hall, Stuart. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, Edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996. 465-475. Lords of the Underground. “Tic-Tic.” Keepers of the Funk. Pendulum Records, 1994. CD.Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1994. 19-24.Milon, Alain. “Pourquoi le Rappeur Chante? Le Rap comme Expression de la Relégation Urbaine.” Cités 19 (2004): 71-80.MC Solaar (Claude M’Barali). “Lève-toi et rap.” Cinquème as. Wea International, 2001. CD.———. “Nouveau Western.” Prose Combat. Cohiba, 1994. CD.Nas. “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Illmatic. Columbia Records, 1994. CD.Petetin, Véronique. “Slam, Rap, et ‘Mondialité.” Études 6 (June 2009): 797-808.Prévos, André J.M. “Le Business du Rap en France.” The French Review 74 (April 2001): 900-21.———. “Postcolonial Popular Music in France.” Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop outside the USA. Ed. Tony Mitchell. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 39-56. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1994.Shusterman, Richard. “L’Estitique Postmoderne du Rap.” Rue Deseartes 5/6 (November 1992): 209-28.Silverstein, Paul A. “‘Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire?’: French Gangsta Rap and the Critique of State Capitalism.” Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World. Ed. Alain-Philippe Durand. Oxford: Scarecrow Press, 2002. 45-67. The Crusaders. “The Well’s Gone Dry.” Southern Comfort. ABC/Blue Thumb Records, 1974. CD.Various Contributors. “‘Lève-toi et rap’ Direct Sample of Vocals/Lyrics.” whosampled.com.———. “‘Nouveau Western’ Direct Sample of Hook/Riff.” whosampled.com.Various Contributors. “MC Solaar – ‘Lève-toi et rap’ Lyrics.” Rap Genius.

Globalisation is often identified as the pre-eminent push towards a global social order. Some see globalisation as an all encompassing and inevitable process towards an emerging “hyperglobal” world order (Held et al.); an “inexorable integration of markets, nation states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before” (Friedman); a world that has become a “single place” (Robertson). Some contend that this emergent global order signals the end of the nation state (Ohmae), while others argue it is a deliberate project of capitalism, imposing intense market forces on states and individuals (McMichael, Hirst and Thompson). Some, like Wallerstein, question the ‘newness’ of this global order, pointing to continuities with earlier capitalist and imperialist movements. Across these diverse views, there is a central shared notion that globalisation moves us towards a global social order (past, present, or future), an order that is in need of interrogation and critique. In an era of global power monopolies, intense social upheaval and inequality, how can order be anything but suspect? Order is at the crux of power; we associate it with domination and control, a system imposed. Social and cultural critics, influenced by liberation movements of the past 50 years, are vigilant in questioning the existing order, and work to expose the inequalities inscribed within it. Order serves the interests of the powerful, at the expense of the weak. We see it as a social construct, negotiated as much through our very ways of knowing (‘the order of things’) and systems of representation and belief as it is through institutions of regulation and enforcement. Social inquiry is the critique of order, seeing order as an effect of power and domination. Yet our own inquiry is fraught with order. Order, more than progress, is the end point of Modernity, the promise of knowledge and technology; a new order of global economic and social prosperity. Implicit in critique is a call for reform, for a different social order. The idea of a new order underpins social critique. The drive to understand is a drive towards order. Or is such ordered sense-making just a particular kind of inquiry, the totalising project of modernity, resisted by poststructuralist, postmodernist, and postcolonial social critics? Following this tradition of resistance, many contemporary social debates are characterised by a scepticism towards order, whether of the past, present, or identified as emerging, to be struggled towards or resisted. In a ‘post’ mode of inquiry, cultural critics such as those included in this issue of M/C Journal deconstruct order, reluctant to impose or propose another order. Some identify alternative formations that emerge, tentatively, in spite of order, or out of disorder. These diverse social and cultural formations can be thought of as examples of ‘spontaneous order’, following mathematician Steven Strogatz’s work (revising chaos and complexity theory) on synchrony in complex natural phenomena. Many critics look to the spaces of new media to explore questions of social order, imposed or spontaneous, hegemonic or liberatory. Just as the city is emblematic of modernity’s order, the Internet and converged media are emblematic of the ‘hyperglobal’ order, and the various dispersed formations of ‘spontaneous order’. The articles in this issue of M/C Journal engage with this topic of ‘order’ from a variety of perspectives. Our feature article by Mark Nunes deals with what is perhaps the most important struggle for ‘order’ of the present time – the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ and its implications for the networked environment. Far from the quagmire of the Iraqi conflict, Nunes finds a new kind of order being imposed through new policies in the ‘homeland’ itself. Another, far less life-threatening but nonetheless important, ideological conflict is currently playing out closer to M/C’s home in Australia, following the recent changes to the tertiary education system imposed by the Federal government. Tara Brabazon’s article “Freedom from Choice” questions the implications of the new policies, and asks how they will re-order the educational value system in this country. Derek Wallace adds a wider perspective to this line of thought, examining the implications of continuing moves towards a knowledge society or knowledge economy in many leading nations of the Western hemisphere: whose order is being pursued here, and is it a beneficial one? In turn, Teodor Mitew examines sites of resistance to these and other attempted re-orderings. In his view, autonomous activist movements such as the Critical Art Ensemble desire a ‘beta-utopian order’, an unfinished order existing in ‘eternal pre-release form’ and constantly requiring debugging. The computer metaphor is carried through to Jussi Parikka’s article, describing the continuing virus threat as a form of digital disorder. He suggests that viruses uncover ideological and political aspects of digital order which would otherwise remain unseen. We remain in the digital realm with our subsequent articles. In his contribution to this issue, Mark McGuire analyses Habbo Hotel, a highly ordered community space for teenagers which appears not unlike an online version of some of the privatised townships now run by Disney and other corporations. Providing further insight into how such ordering of commercial online spaces is performed, Kylie Jarrett offers an examination of the correlations between the rhetorical, hypertext, and database structures of ninemsn, Microsoft’s Australian partnership with the Nine TV network. The rhetoric of social and communal order is also the topic of Rob Garbutt’s article “Local Order”, which investigates the power of that simple term ‘local’ as it is applied to or withheld from residents in the town of Lismore, New South Wales. Being a local is an honour not awarded lightly, as Garbutt shows. And such local order exists even in anarchist communities, as Jeff Shantz shows: while resisting dominant paradigms, ‘DIY’ anarchists “occupy their own ground” in autonomous zones (‘A-zones’), and offer alternative orderings of their environment. The last three articles in this issue all deal with the ordering power of the media. Stephen Stockwell discusses the response of Hollywood to the 11 September attacks and subsequent wars, showing the mainstream film industry’s support for the Bush administration’s campaign at home and abroad while painting a different picture for television drama. Ben Isakhan offers a crucial counterpoint to the all-too-common myths and omissions dominating news coverage from the Iraqi conflict, and Solrun Hoass finally turns our gaze towards another member of the infamous ‘axis of evil’, pleading for a more considered engagement with North Korea which could be informed by a look at the movies and television series produced there. Order is multifaceted and omnipresent. The articles in this issue offer glimpses of some of the flashpoints of the many struggles between order and disorder, and between various ordering paradigms. In doing so, they provide a snapshot of current world conflicts. References Albrow, M. The Global Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Friedman, T. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. London: Harper Collins, 2000. Globalization. 3 Feb. 2005 http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/>. Held, D., et al. Global Transformations. Oxford: Polity, 1999. Hirst, P., and G. Thompson. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge, UK.: Polity Press, 1999. McMichael, P. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2000. Ohmae, K. The End of the Nation-State. New York: Free Press, 1995. Robertson, R. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Strogatz, Steven. Synch: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. New York: Theia, 2003. Wallerstein, I., and T. Hopkins. The Age of Transition: The World System 1945-2025. Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Zed Books, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ferrier, Liz, and Axel Bruns. "Editorial: Fraught with Order." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Ferrier, L., and A. Bruns. (Jan. 2005) "Editorial: Fraught with Order," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/00-editorial.php>.

Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine whether recent catastrophic tsunamis have driven a cultural shift in the awareness of Australians to the danger associated with this natural hazard and whether the media have contributed to the emergence of “tsunami” as a new Australian catastrophe. Prior to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster (2004 IOT), tsunamis as a type of hazard capable of generating widespread catastrophe were not well known by the general public and had barely registered within the wider scientific community. As a university based lecturer who specialises in natural disasters, I always started my public talks or student lectures with an attempt at a detailed description of what a tsunami is. With little high quality visual and media imagery to use, this was not easy. The Australian geologist Ted Bryant was right when he named his 2001 book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. That changed on 26 December 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever recorded occurred northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering the most catastrophic tsunami ever experienced. The 2004 IOT claimed at least 220,000 lives—probably more—injured tens of thousands, destroyed widespread coastal infrastructure and left millions homeless. Beyond the catastrophic impacts, this tsunami was conspicuous because, for the first time, such a devastating tsunami was widely captured on video and other forms of moving and still imagery. This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, the tsunami took place during daylight hours in good weather conditions—factors conducive to capturing high quality visual images. Secondly, many people—both local residents and westerners who were on beachside holidays and at the coast at multiple locations impacted by the tsunami—were able to capture images of the tsunami on their cameras, videos, and smart phones. The extensive media coverage—including horrifying television, video, and still imagery that raced around the globe in the hours and days after the tsunami, filling our television screens, homes, and lives regardless of where we lived—had a dramatic effect. This single event drove a quantum shift in the wider cultural awareness of this type of catastrophe and acted as a catalyst for improved individual and societal understanding of the nature and effects of disaster landscapes. Since this event, there have been several notable tsunamis, including the March 2011 Japan catastrophe. Once again, this event occurred during daylight hours and was widely captured by multiple forms of media. These events have resulted in a cascade of media coverage across television, radio, movie, and documentary channels, in the print media, online, and in the popular press and on social media—very little of which was available prior to 2004. Much of this has been documentary and informative in style, but there have also been numerous television dramas and movies. For example, an episode of the popular American television series CSI Miami entitled Crime Wave (Season 3, Episode 7) featured a tsunami, triggered by a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic and impacting Miami, as the backdrop to a standard crime-filled episode ("CSI," IMDb; Wikipedia). In 2010, Warner Bros Studios released the supernatural drama fantasy film Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. In the movie, a television journalist survives a near-death experience during the 2004 IOT in what might be the most dramatic, and probably accurate, cinematic portrayal of a tsunami ("Hereafter," IMDb; Wikipedia). Thus, these creative and entertaining forms of media, influenced by the catastrophic nature of tsunamis, are impetuses for creativity that also contribute to a transformation of cultural knowledge of catastrophe. The transformative potential of creative media, together with national and intergovernmental disaster risk reduction activity such as community education, awareness campaigns, community evacuation planning and drills, may be indirectly inferred from rapid and positive community behavioural responses. By this I mean many people in coastal communities who experience strong earthquakes are starting a process of self-evacuation, even if regional tsunami warning centres have not issued an alert or warning. For example, when people in coastal locations in Samoa felt a large earthquake on 29 September 2009, many self-evacuated to higher ground or sought information and instruction from relevant authorities because they expected a tsunami to occur. When interviewed, survivors stated that the memory of television and media coverage of the 2004 IOT acted as a catalyst for their affirmative behavioural response (Dominey-Howes and Thaman 1). Thus, individual and community cultural understandings of the nature and effects of tsunami catastrophes are incredibly important for shaping resilience and reducing vulnerability. However, this cultural shift is not playing out evenly.Are Australia and Its People at Risk from Tsunamis?Prior to the 2004 IOT, there was little discussion about, research in to, or awareness about tsunamis and Australia. Ted Bryant from the University of Wollongong had controversially proposed that Australia had been affected by tsunamis much bigger than the 2004 IOT six to eight times during the last 10,000 years and that it was only a matter of when, not if, such an event repeated itself (Bryant, "Second Edition"). Whilst his claims had received some media attention, his ideas did not achieve widespread scientific, cultural, or community acceptance. Not-with-standing this, Australia has been affected by more than 60 small tsunamis since European colonisation (Dominey-Howes 239). Indeed, the 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami caused significant flooding of parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia (Prendergast and Brown 69). However, the affected areas were sparsely populated and experienced very little in the way of damage or loss. Thus they did not cross any sort of critical threshold of “catastrophe” and failed to achieve meaningful community consciousness—they were not agents of cultural transformation.Regardless of the risk faced by Australia’s coastline, Australians travel to, and holiday in, places that experience tsunamis. In fact, 26 Australians were killed during the 2004 IOT (DFAT) and five were killed by the September 2009 South Pacific tsunami (Caldwell et al. 26). What Role Do the Media Play in Preparing for and Responding to Catastrophe?Regardless of the type of hazard/disaster/catastrophe, the key functions the media play include (but are not limited to): pre-event community education, awareness raising, and planning and preparations; during-event preparation and action, including status updates, evacuation warnings and notices, and recommendations for affirmative behaviours; and post-event responses and recovery actions to follow, including where to gain aid and support. Further, the media also play a role in providing a forum for debate and post-event analysis and reflection, as a mechanism to hold decision makers to account. From time to time, the media also provide a platform for examining who, if anyone, might be to blame for losses sustained during catastrophes and can act as a powerful conduit for driving socio-cultural, behavioural, and policy change. Many of these functions are elegantly described and a series of best practices outlined by The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency in a tsunami specific publication freely available online (CDEMA 1). What Has Been the Media Coverage in Australia about Tsunamis and Their Effects on Australians?A manifest contents analysis of media material covering tsunamis over the last decade using the framework of Cox et al. reveals that coverage falls into distinctive and repetitive forms or themes. After tsunamis, I have collected articles (more than 130 to date) published in key Australian national broadsheets (e.g., The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald) and tabloid (e.g., The Telegraph) newspapers and have watched on television and monitored on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, the types of coverage given to tsunamis either affecting Australia, or Australians domestically and overseas. In all cases, I continued to monitor and collect these stories and accounts for a fixed period of four weeks after each event, commencing on the day of the tsunami. The themes raised in the coverage include: the nature of the event. For example, where, when, why did it occur, how big was it, and what were the effects; what emergency response and recovery actions are being undertaken by the emergency services and how these are being provided; exploration of how the event was made worse or better by poor/good planning and prior knowledge, action or inaction, confusion and misunderstanding; the attribution of blame and responsibility; the good news story—often the discovery and rescue of an “iconic victim/survivor”—usually a child days to weeks later; and follow-up reporting weeks to months later and on anniversaries. This coverage generally focuses on how things are improving and is often juxtaposed with the ongoing suffering of victims. I select the word “victims” purposefully for the media frequently prefer this over the more affirmative “survivor.”The media seldom carry reports of “behind the scenes” disaster preparatory work such as community education programs, the development and installation of warning and monitoring systems, and ongoing training and policy work by response agencies and governments since such stories tend to be less glamorous in terms of the disaster gore factor and less newsworthy (Cox et al. 469; Miles and Morse 365; Ploughman 308).With regard to Australians specifically, the manifest contents analysis reveals that coverage can be described as follows. First, it focuses on those Australians killed and injured. Such coverage provides elements of a biography of the victims, telling their stories, personalising these individuals so we build empathy for their suffering and the suffering of their families. The Australian victims are not unknown strangers—they are named and pictures of their smiling faces are printed or broadcast. Second, the media describe and catalogue the loss and ongoing suffering of the victims (survivors). Third, the media use phrases to describe Australians such as “innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This narrative establishes the sense that these “innocents” have been somehow wronged and transgressed and that suffering should not be experienced by them. The fourth theme addresses the difficulties Australians have in accessing Consular support and in acquiring replacement passports in order to return home. It usually goes on to describe how they have difficulty in gaining access to accommodation, clothing, food, and water and any necessary medicines and the challenges associated with booking travel home and the complexities of communicating with family and friends. The last theme focuses on how Australians were often (usually?) not given relevant safety information by “responsible people” or “those in the know” in the place where they were at the time of the tsunami. This establishes a sense that Australians were left out and not considered by the relevant authorities. This narrative pays little attention to the wide scale impact upon and suffering of resident local populations who lack the capacity to escape the landscape of catastrophe.How Does Australian Media Coverage of (Tsunami) Catastrophe Compare with Elsewhere?A review of the available literature suggests media coverage of catastrophes involving domestic citizens is similar globally. For example, Olofsson (557) in an analysis of newspaper articles in Sweden about the 2004 IOT showed that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster heavily focused on Sweden, Swedish victims, and Thailand, and that there was a division between “us” (Swedes) and “them” (others or non-Swedes). Olofsson (557) described two types of “us” and “them.” At the international level Sweden, i.e. “us,” was glorified and contrasted with “inferior” countries such as Thailand, “them.” Olofsson (557) concluded that mediated frames of catastrophe are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Such nationalistic approaches preface one type of suffering in catastrophe over others and delegitimises the experiences of some survivors. Thus, catastrophes are not evenly experienced. Importantly, Olofsson although not explicitly using the term, explains that the underlying reason for this construction of “them” and “us” is a form of imperialism and colonialism. Sharp refers to “historically rooted power hierarchies between countries and regions of the world” (304)—this is especially so of western news media reporting on catastrophes within and affecting “other” (non-western) countries. Sharp goes much further in relation to western representations and imaginations of the “war on terror” (arguably a global catastrophe) by explicitly noting the near universal western-centric dominance of this representation and the construction of the “west” as good and all “non-west” as not (299). Like it or not, the western media, including elements of the mainstream Australian media, adhere to this imperialistic representation. Studies of tsunami and other catastrophes drawing upon different types of media (still images, video, film, camera, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like) and from different national settings have explored the multiple functions of media. These functions include: providing information, questioning the authorities, and offering a chance for transformative learning. Further, they alleviate pain and suffering, providing new virtual communities of shared experience and hearing that facilitate resilience and recovery from catastrophe. Lastly, they contribute to a cultural transformation of catastrophe—both positive and negative (Hjorth and Kyoung-hwa "The Mourning"; "Good Grief"; McCargo and Hyon-Suk 236; Brown and Minty 9; Lau et al. 675; Morgan and de Goyet 33; Piotrowski and Armstrong 341; Sood et al. 27).Has Extensive Media Coverage Resulted in an Improved Awareness of the Catastrophic Potential of Tsunami for Australians?In playing devil’s advocate, my simple response is NO! This because I have been interviewing Australians about their perceptions and knowledge of tsunamis as a catastrophe, after events have occurred. These events have triggered alerts and warnings by the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) for selected coastal regions of Australia. Consequently, I have visited coastal suburbs and interviewed people about tsunamis generally and those events specifically. Formal interviews (surveys) and informal conversations have revolved around what people perceived about the hazard, the likely consequences, what they knew about the warning, where they got their information from, how they behaved and why, and so forth. I have undertaken this work after the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 New Zealand, 2009 South Pacific, the February 2010 Chile, and March 2011 Japan tsunamis. I have now spoken to more than 800 people. Detailed research results will be presented elsewhere, but of relevance here, I have discovered that, to begin with, Australians have a reasonable and shared cultural knowledge of the potential catastrophic effects that tsunamis can have. They use terms such as “devastating; death; damage; loss; frightening; economic impact; societal loss; horrific; overwhelming and catastrophic.” Secondly, when I ask Australians about their sources of information about tsunamis, they describe the television (80%); Internet (85%); radio (25%); newspaper (35%); and social media including YouTube (65%). This tells me that the media are critical to underpinning knowledge of catastrophe and are a powerful transformative medium for the acquisition of knowledge. Thirdly, when asked about where people get information about live warning messages and alerts, Australians stated the “television (95%); Internet (70%); family and friends (65%).” Fourthly and significantly, when individuals were asked what they thought being caught in a tsunami would be like, responses included “fun (50%); awesome (75%); like in a movie (40%).” Fifthly, when people were asked about what they would do (i.e., their “stated behaviour”) during a real tsunami arriving at the coast, responses included “go down to the beach to swim/surf the tsunami (40%); go to the sea to watch (85%); video the tsunami and sell to the news media people (40%).”An independent and powerful representation of the disjunct between Australians’ knowledge of the catastrophic potential of tsunamis and their “negative” behavioral response can be found in viewing live television news coverage broadcast from Sydney beaches on the morning of Sunday 28 February 2010. The Chilean tsunami had taken more than 14 hours to travel from Chile to the eastern seaboard of Australia and the ATWS had issued an accurate warning and had correctly forecast the arrival time of the tsunami (approximately 08.30 am). The television and radio media had dutifully broadcast the warning issued by the State Emergency Services. The message was simple: “Stay out of the water, evacuate the beaches and move to higher ground.” As the tsunami arrived, those news broadcasts showed volunteer State Emergency Service personnel and Surf Life Saving Australia lifeguards “begging” with literally hundreds (probably thousands up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia) of members of the public to stop swimming in the incoming tsunami and to evacuate the beaches. On that occasion, Australians were lucky and the tsunami was inconsequential. What do these responses mean? Clearly Australians recognise and can describe the consequences of a tsunami. However, they are not associating the catastrophic nature of tsunami with their own lives or experience. They are avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear but are the subject of ongoing study.The Emergence of Tsunami as a “New Australian Catastrophe”?As a natural disaster expert with nearly two decades experience, in my mind tsunami has emerged as a “new Australian catastrophe.” I believe this has occurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 2004 IOT was devastating and did impact northwestern Australia, raising the flag on this hitherto, unknown threat. Australia is now known to be vulnerable to the tsunami catastrophe. The media have played a critical role here. Secondly, in the 2004 IOT and other tsunamis since, Australians have died and their deaths have been widely reported in the Australian media. Thirdly, the emergence of various forms of social media has facilitated an explosion in information and material that can be consumed, digested, reimagined, and normalised by Australians hungry for the gore of catastrophe—it feeds our desire for catastrophic death and destruction. Fourthly, catastrophe has been creatively imagined and retold for a story-hungry viewing public. Whether through regular television shows easily consumed from a comfy chair at home, or whilst eating popcorn at a cinema, tsunami catastrophe is being fed to us in a way that reaffirms its naturalness. Juxtaposed against this idea though is that, despite all the graphic imagery of tsunami catastrophe, especially images of dead children in other countries, Australian media do not and culturally cannot, display images of dead Australian children. Such images are widely considered too gruesome but are well known to drive changes in cultural behaviour because of the iconic significance of the child within our society. As such, a cultural shift has not yet occurred and so the potential of catastrophe remains waiting to strike. Fifthly and significantly, given the fact that large numbers of Australians have not died during recent tsunamis means that again, the catastrophic potential of tsunamis is not yet realised and has not resulted in cultural changes to more affirmative behaviour. Lastly, Australians are probably more aware of “regular or common” catastrophes such as floods and bush fires that are normal to the Australian climate system and which are endlessly experienced individually and culturally and covered by the media in all forms. The Australian summer of 2012–13 has again been dominated by floods and fires. If this idea is accepted, the media construct a uniquely Australian imaginary of catastrophe and cultural discourse of disaster. The familiarity with these common climate catastrophes makes us “culturally blind” to the catastrophe that is tsunami.The consequences of a major tsunami affecting Australia some point in the future are likely to be of a scale not yet comprehensible. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "ABC Net Splash." 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://splash.abc.net.au/media?id=31077›. Brown, Philip, and Jessica Minty. “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving after the 2004 Tsunami.” Southern Economic Journal 75 (2008): 9–25. Bryant, Edward. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. First Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ———. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. Second Edition, Sydney: Springer-Praxis, 2008. Caldwell, Anna, Natalie Gregg, Fiona Hudson, Patrick Lion, Janelle Miles, Bart Sinclair, and John Wright. “Samoa Tsunami Claims Five Aussies as Death Toll Rises.” The Courier Mail 1 Oct. 2009. 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/samoa-tsunami-claims-five-aussies-as-death-toll-rises/story-e6freon6-1225781357413›. CDEMA. "The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Tsunami SMART Media Web Site." 18 Dec. 2012. 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://weready.org/tsunami/index.php?Itemid=40&id=40&option=com_content&view=article›. Cox, Robin, Bonita Long, and Megan Jones. “Sequestering of Suffering – Critical Discourse Analysis of Natural Disaster Media Coverage.” Journal of Health Psychology 13 (2008): 469–80. “CSI: Miami (Season 3, Episode 7).” International Movie Database (IMDb). ‹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0534784/›. 9 Jan. 2013. "CSI: Miami (Season 3)." Wikipedia. ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Miami_(season_3)#Episodes›. 21 Mar. 2013. DFAT. "Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Annual Report 2004–2005." 8 Jan. 2013 ‹http://www.dfat.gov.au/dept/annual_reports/04_05/downloads/2_Outcome2.pdf›. Dominey-Howes, Dale. “Geological and Historical Records of Australian Tsunami.” Marine Geology 239 (2007): 99–123. Dominey-Howes, Dale, and Randy Thaman. “UNESCO-IOC International Tsunami Survey Team Samoa Interim Report of Field Survey 14–21 October 2009.” No. 2. Australian Tsunami Research Centre. University of New South Wales, Sydney. "Hereafter." International Movie Database (IMDb). ‹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212419/›. 9 Jan. 2013."Hereafter." Wikipedia. ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereafter (film)›. 21 Mar. 2013. Hjorth, Larissa, and Yonnie Kyoung-hwa. “The Mourning After: A Case Study of Social Media in the 3.11 Earthquake Disaster in Japan.” Television and News Media 12 (2011): 552–59. ———, and Yonnie Kyoung-hwa. “Good Grief: The Role of Mobile Social Media in the 3.11 Earthquake Disaster in Japan.” Digital Creativity 22 (2011): 187–99. Lau, Joseph, Mason Lau, and Jean Kim. “Impacts of Media Coverage on the Community Stress Level in Hong Kong after the Tsunami on 26 December 2004.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 60 (2006): 675–82. McCargo, Duncan, and Lee Hyon-Suk. “Japan’s Political Tsunami: What’s Media Got to Do with It?” International Journal of Press-Politics 15 (2010): 236–45. Miles, Brian, and Stephanie Morse. “The Role of News Media in Natural Disaster Risk and Recovery.” Ecological Economics 63 (2007): 365–73. Morgan, Olive, and Charles de Goyet. “Dispelling Disaster Myths about Dead Bodies and Disease: The Role of Scientific Evidence and the Media.” Revista Panamericana de Salud Publica-Pan American Journal of Public Health 18 (2005): 33–6. Olofsson, Anna. “The Indian Ocean Tsunami in Swedish Newspapers: Nationalism after Catastrophe.” Disaster Prevention and Management 20 (2011): 557–69. Piotrowski, Chris, and Terry Armstrong. “Mass Media Preferences in Disaster: A Study of Hurricane Danny.” Social Behavior and Personality 26 (1998): 341–45. Ploughman, Penelope. “The American Print News Media Construction of Five Natural Disasters.” Disasters 19 (1995): 308–26. Prendergast, Amy, and Nick Brown. “Far Field Impact and Coastal Sedimentation Associated with the 2006 Java Tsunami in West Australia: Post-Tsunami Survey at Steep Point, West Australia.” Natural Hazards 60 (2012): 69–79. Sharp, Joanne. “A Subaltern Critical Geopolitics of The War on Terror: Postcolonial Security in Tanzania.” Geoforum 42 (2011): 297–305. Sood, Rahul, Stockdale, Geoffrey, and Everett Rogers. “How the News Media Operate in Natural Disasters.” Journal of Communication 37 (1987): 27–41.

Diaspora This article looks at diaspora through the transformations of an established public service broadcaster, the BBC World Service, by considering some of the findings of the AHRC-funded Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service, which is part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities program. Tuning In has six themes, each of which focuses upon the role of the BBC WS: The Politics of Translation, Diasporic Nationhood, Religious Transnationalism, Sport across Diasporas, Migrating Music and Drama for Development. The World Service, which was until 2011 funded by the Foreign Office, was set up to cater for the British diaspora and had the specific remit of transmitting ideas about Britishness to its audiences overseas. Tuning In demonstrates interrelationships between the global and the local in the diasporic contact zone of the BBC World Service, which has provided a mediated home for the worldwide British diaspora since its inception in 1932. The local and the global have merged, elided, and separated at different times and in different spaces in the changing story of the BBC (Briggs). The BBC WS is both local and global with activities that present Britishness both at home and abroad. The service has, however, come a long way since its early days as the Empire Service. Audiences for the World Service’s 31 foreign language services, radio, television, and Internet facilities include substantive non-British/English-speaking constituencies, rendering it a contact zone for the exploration of ideas and political opportunities on a truly transnational scale. This heterogeneous body of exilic, refugee intellectuals, writers, and artists now operates alongside an ongoing expression of Britishness in all its diverse reconfiguration. This includes the residual voice of empire and its patriarchal paternalism, the embrace of more recent expressions of neoliberalism as well as traditional values of impartiality and objectivism and, in the case of the arts, elements of bohemianism and creative innovation. The World Service might have begun as a communication system for the British ex-pat diaspora, but its role has changed along with the changing relationship between Britain and its colonial past. In the terrain of sport, for example, cricket, the “game of empire,” has shifted from Britain to the Indian subcontinent (Guha) with the rise of “Twenty 20” and the Indian Premier League (IPL); summed up in Ashis Nandy’s claim that “cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English” (Nandy viii). English county cricket dominated the airways of the World Service well into the latter half of the twentieth century, but the audiences of the service have demanded a response to social and cultural change and the service has responded. Sport can thus be seen to have offered a democratic space in which new diasporic relations can be forged as well as one in which colonial and patriarchal values are maintained. The BBC WS today is part of a network through which non-British diasporic peoples can reconnect with their home countries via the service, as well as an online forum for debate across the globe. In many regions of the world, it continues to be the single most trusted source of information at times of crisis and disaster because of its traditions of impartiality and objectivity, even though (as noted in the article on Al-Jazeera in this special issue) this view is hotly contested. The principles of objectivity and impartiality are central to the BBC WS, which may seem paradoxical since it is funded by the Commonwealth and Foreign office, and its origins lie in empire and colonial discourse. Archive material researched by our project demonstrates the specifically ideological role of what was first called the Empire Service. The language of empire was deployed in this early programming, and there is an explicit expression of an ideological purpose (Hill). For example, at the Imperial Conference in 1930, the service was supported in terms of its political powers of “strengthening ties” between parts of the empire. This view comes from a speech by John Reith, the BBC’s first Director General, which was broadcast when the service opened. In this speech, broadcasting is identified as having come to involve a “connecting and co-ordinating link between the scattered parts of the British Empire” (Reith). Local British values are transmitted across the globe. Through the service, empire and nation are reinstated through the routine broadcasting of cyclical events, the importance of which Scannell and Cardiff describe as follows: Nothing so well illustrates the noiseless manner in which the BBC became perhaps the central agent of national culture as its cyclical role; the cyclical production year in year out, of an orderly, regular progression of festivities, rituals and celebrations—major and minor, civic and sacred—that mark the unfolding of the broadcast year. (278; italics in the original) State occasions and big moments, including those directly concerned with governance and affairs of state, and those which focused upon sport and religion, were a big part in these “noiseless” cycles, and became key elements in the making of Britishness across the globe. The BBC is “noiseless” because the timetable is assumed and taken for granted as not only what is but what should be. However, the BBC WS has been and has had to be responsive to major shifts in global and local—and, indeed, glocal—power geometries that have led to spatial transformations, notably in the reconfiguration of the service in the era of postcolonialism. Some of these massive changes have involved the large-scale movement of people and a concomitant rethinking of diaspora as a concept. Empire, like nation, operates as an “imagined community,” too big to be grasped by individuals (Anderson), as well as a material actuality. The dynamics of identification are rarely linear and there are inconsistencies and disruptions: even when the voice is officially that of empire, the practice of the World Service is much more diverse, nuanced, and dialogical. The BBC WS challenges boundaries through the connectivities of communication and through different ways of belonging and, similarly, through a problematisation of concepts like attachment and detachment; this is most notable in the way in which programming has adapted to new diasporic audiences and in the reworkings of spatiality in the shift from empire to diversity via multiculturalism. There are tensions between diaspora and multiculturalism that are apparent in a discussion of broadcasting and communication networks. Diaspora has been distinguished by mobility and hybridity (Clifford, Hall, Bhaba, Gilroy) and it has been argued that the adjectival use of diasporic offers more opportunity for fluidity and transformation (Clifford). The concept of diaspora, as it has been used to explain the fluidity and mobility of diasporic identifications, can challenge more stabilised, “classic” understandings of diaspora (Chivallon). A hybrid version of diaspora might sit uneasily with a strong sense of belonging and with the idea that the broadcast media offer a multicultural space in which each voice can be heard and a wide range of cultures are present. Tuning In engaged with ways of rethinking the BBC’s relationship to diaspora in the twenty-first century in a number of ways: for example, in the intersection of discursive regimes of representation; in the status of public service broadcasting; vis-à-vis the consequences of diverse diasporic audiences; through the role of cultural intermediaries such as journalists and writers; and via global economic and political materialities (Gillespie, Webb and Baumann). Tuning In thus provided a multi-themed and methodologically diverse exploration of how the BBC WS is itself a series of spaces which are constitutive of the transformation of diasporic identifications. Exploring the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social flows and networks involves, first, reconfiguring what is understood by transnationalism, diaspora, and postcolonial relationalities: in particular, attending to how these transform as well as sometimes reinstate colonial and patriarchal discourses and practices, thus bringing together different dimensions of the local and the global. Tuning In ranges across different fields, embracing cultural, social, and political areas of experience as represented in broadcasting coverage. These fields illustrate the educative role of the BBC and the World Service that is also linked to its particular version of impartiality; just as The Archers was set up to provide information and guidance through a narrative of everyday life to rural communities and farmers after the Second World War, so the Afghan version plays an “edutainment” role (Skuse) where entertainment also serves an educational, public service information role. Indeed, the use of soap opera genre such as The Archers as a vehicle for humanitarian and health information has been very successful over the past decade, with the “edutainment” genre becoming a feature of the World Service’s broadcasting in places such as Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, India, Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. In a genre that has been promoted by the World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the BBC WS uses drama formats to build transnational production relationships with media professionals and to strengthen creative capacities to undertake behaviour change through communication work. Such programming, which is in the tradition of the BBC WS, draws upon the service’s expertise and exhibits both an ideological commitment to progressive social intervention and a paternalist approach drawing upon colonialist legacies. Nowadays, however, the BBC WS can be considered a diasporic contact zone, providing sites of transnational intra-diasporic contact as well as cross-cultural encounters, spaces for cross-diasporic creativity and representation, and a forum for cross-cultural dialogue and potentially cosmopolitan translations (Pratt, Clifford). These activities are, however, still marked by historically forged asymmetric power relations, notably of colonialism, imperialism, and globalisation, as well as still being dominated by hegemonic masculinity in many parts of the service, which thus represent sites of contestation, conflict, and transgression. Conversely, diasporic identities are themselves co-shaped by media representations (Sreberny). The diasporic contact zone is a relational space in which diasporic identities are made and remade and contested. Tuning In employed a diverse range of methods to analyse the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social and cultural flows, networks, and reconfigurations of transnationalisms and diaspora, as well as reinstating colonial, patriarchal practices. The research deconstructed some assumptions and conditions of class-based elitism, colonialism, and patriarchy through a range of strategies. Texts are, of course, central to this work, with the BBC Archives at Caversham (near Reading) representing the starting point for many researchers. The archive is a rich source of material for researchers which carries a vast range of data including fragile memos written on scraps of paper: a very local source of global communications. Other textual material occupies the less locatable cyberspace, for example in the case of Have Your Say exchanges on the Web. People also featured in the project, through the media, in cyberspace, and physical encounters, all of which demonstrate the diverse modes of connection that have been established. Researchers worked with the BBC WS in a variety of ways, not only through interviews and ethnographic approaches, such as participant observation and witness seminars, but also through exchanges between the service, its practitioners, and the researchers (for example, through broadcasts where the project provided the content and the ideas and researchers have been part of programs that have gone out on the BBC WS (Goldblatt, Webb), bringing together people who work for the BBC and Tuning In researchers). On this point, it should be remembered that Bush House is, itself, a diasporic space which, from its geographical location in the Strand in London, has brought together diasporic people from around the globe to establish international communication networks, and has thus become the focus and locus of some of our research. What we have understood by the term “diasporic space” in this context includes both the materialities of architecture and cyberspace which is the site of digital diasporas (Anderssen) and, indeed, the virtual exchanges featured on “Have Your Say,” the online feedback site (Tuning In). Living the Glocal The BBC WS offers a mode of communication and a series of networks that are spatially located both in the UK, through the material presence of Bush House, and abroad, through the diasporic communities constituting contemporary audiences. The service may have been set up to provide news and entertainment for the British diaspora abroad, but the transformation of the UK into a multi-ethnic society “at home,” alongside its commitment to, and the servicing of, no less than 32 countries abroad, demonstrates a new mission and a new balance of power. Different diasporic communities, such as multi-ethnic Londoners, and local and British Muslims in the north of England, demonstrate the dynamics and ambivalences of what is meant by “diaspora” today. For example, the BBC and the WS play an ambiguous role in the lives of UK Muslim communities with Pakistani connections, where consumers of the international news can feel that the BBC is complicit in the conflation of Muslims with terrorists. Engaging Diaspora Audiences demonstrated the diversity of audience reception in a climate of marginalisation, often bordering on moral panic, and showed how diasporic audiences often use Al-Jazeera or Pakistani and Urdu channels, which are seen to take up more sympathetic political positions. It seems, however, that more egalitarian conversations are becoming possible through the channels of the WS. The participation of local people in the BBC WS global project is seen, for example, as in the popular “Witness Seminars” that have both a current focus and one that is projected into the future, as in the case of the “2012 Generation” (that is, the young people who come of age in 2012, the year of the London Olympics). The Witness Seminars demonstrate the recuperation of past political and social events such as “Bangladesh in 1971” (Tuning In), “The Cold War seminar” (Tuning In) and “Diasporic Nationhood” (the cultural movements reiterated and recovered in the “Literary Lives” project (Gillespie, Baumann and Zinik). Indeed, the WS’s current focus on the “2012 Generation,” including an event in which 27 young people (each of whom speaks one of the WS languages) were invited to an open day at Bush House in 2009, vividly illustrates how things have changed. Whereas in 1948 (the last occasion when the Olympic Games were held in London), the world came to London, it is arguable that, in 2012, in contemporary multi-ethnic Britain, the world is already here (Webb). This enterprise has the advantage of giving voice to the present rather than filtering the present through the legacies of colonialism that remain a problem for the Witness Seminars more generally. The democratising possibilities of sport, as well as the restrictions of its globalising elements, are well represented by Tuning In (Woodward). Sport has, of course become more globalised, especially through the development of Internet and satellite technologies (Giulianotti) but it retains powerful local affiliations and identifications. At all levels and in diverse places, there are strong attachments to local and national teams that are constitutive of communities, including diasporic and multi-ethnic communities. Sport is both typical and distinctive of the BBC World Service; something that is part of a wider picture but also an area of experience with a life of its own. Our “Sport across Diasporas” project has thus explored some of the routes the World Service has travelled in its engagement with sport in order to provide some understanding of the legacy of empire and patriarchy, as well as engaging with the multiplicities of change in the reconstruction of Britishness. Here, it is important to recognise that what began as “BBC Sport” evolved into “World Service Sport.” Coverage of the world’s biggest sporting events was established through the 1930s to the 1960s in the development of the BBC WS. However, it is not only the global dimensions of sporting events that have been assumed; so too are national identifications. There is no question that the superiority of British/English sport is naturalised through its dominance of the BBC WS airways, but the possibilities of reinterpretation and re-accommodation have also been made possible. There has, indeed, been a changing place of sport in the BBC WS, which can only be understood with reference to wider changes in the relationship between broadcasting and sport, and demonstrates the powerful synchronies between social, political, technological, economic, and cultural factors, notably those that make up the media–sport–commerce nexus that drives so much of the trajectory of contemporary sport. Diasporic audiences shape the schedule as much as what is broadcast. There is no single voice of the BBC in sport. The BBC archive demonstrates a variety of narratives through the development and transformation of the World Service’s sports broadcasting. There are, however, silences: notably those involving women. Sport is still a patriarchal field. However, the imperial genealogies of sport are inextricably entwined with the social, political, and cultural changes taking place in the wider world. There is no detectable linear narrative but rather a series of tensions and contradictions that are reflected and reconfigured in the texts in which deliberations are made. In sport broadcasting, the relationship of the BBC WS with its listeners is, in many instances, genuinely dialogic: for example, through “Have Your Say” websites and internet forums, and some of the actors in these dialogic exchanges are the broadcasters themselves. The history of the BBC and the World Service is one which manifests a degree of autonomy and some spontaneity on the part of journalists and broadcasters. For example, in the case of the BBC WS African sports program, Fast Track (2009), many of the broadcasters interviewed report being able to cover material not technically within their brief; news journalists are able to engage with sporting events and sports journalists have covered social and political news (Woodward). Sometimes this is a matter of taking the initiative or simply of being in the right place at the right time, although this affords an agency to journalists which is increasingly unlikely in the twenty-first century. The Politics of Translation: Words and Music The World Service has played a key role as a cultural broker in the political arena through what could be construed as “educational broadcasting” via the wider terrain of the arts: for example, literature, drama, poetry, and music. Over the years, Bush House has been a home-from-home for poets: internationalists, translators from classical and modern languages, and bohemians; a constituency that, for all its cosmopolitanism, was predominantly white and male in the early days. For example, in the 1930s and 1940s, Louis MacNeice was commissioning editor and surrounded by a friendship network of salaried poets, such as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, C. Day Lewis, and Stephen Spender, who wrote and performed their work for the WS. The foreign language departments of the BBC WS, meanwhile, hired émigrés and exiles from their countries’ educated elites to do similar work. The biannual, book-format journal Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), which was founded in 1965 by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes, included a dedication in Weissbort’s final issue (MPT 22, 2003) to “Poets at Bush House.” This volume amounts to a celebration of the BBC WS and its creative culture, which extended beyond the confines of broadcasting spaces. The reminiscences in “Poets at Bush House” suggest an institutional culture of informal connections and a fluidity of local exchanges that is resonant of the fluidity of the flows and networks of diaspora (Cheesman). Music, too, has distinctive characteristics that mark out this terrain on the broadcast schedule and in the culture of the BBC WS. Music is differentiated from language-centred genres, making it a particularly powerful medium of cross-cultural exchange. Music is portable and yet is marked by a cultural rootedness that may impede translation and interpretation. Music also carries ambiguities as a marker of status across borders, and it combines aesthetic intensity and diffuseness. The Migrating Music project demonstrated BBC WS mediation of music and identity flows (Toynbee). In the production and scheduling notes, issues of migration and diaspora are often addressed directly in the programming of music, while the movement of peoples is a leitmotif in all programs in which music is played and discussed. Music genres are mobile, diasporic, and can be constitutive of Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” (Gilroy), which foregrounds the itinerary of West African music to the Caribbean via the Middle Passage, cross-fertilising with European traditions in the Americas to produce blues and other hybrid forms, and the journey of these forms to Europe. The Migrating Music project focused upon the role of the BBC WS as narrator of the Black Atlantic story and of South Asian cross-over music, from bhangra to filmi, which can be situated among the South Asian diaspora in east and south Africa as well as the Caribbean where they now interact with reggae, calypso, Rapso, and Popso. The transversal flows of music and lyrics encompasses the lived experience of the different diasporas that are accommodated in the BBC WS schedules: for example, they keep alive the connection between the Irish “at home” and in the diaspora through programs featuring traditional music, further demonstrating the interconnections between local and global attachments as well as points of disconnection and contradiction. Textual analysis—including discourse analysis of presenters’ speech, program trailers and dialogue and the BBC’s own construction of “world music”—has revealed that the BBC WS itself performs a constitutive role in keeping alive these traditions. Music, too, has a range of emotional affects which are manifest in the semiotic analyses that have been conducted of recordings and performances. Further, the creative personnel who are involved in music programming, including musicians, play their own role in this ongoing process of musical migration. Once again, the networks of people involved as practitioners become central to the processes and systems through which diasporic audiences are re-produced and engaged. Conclusion The BBC WS can claim to be a global and local cultural intermediary not only because the service was set up to engage with the British diaspora in an international context but because the service, today, is demonstrably a voice that is continually negotiating multi-ethnic audiences both in the UK and across the world. At best, the World Service is a dynamic facilitator of conversations within and across diasporas: ideas are relocated, translated, and travel in different directions. The “local” of a British broadcasting service, established to promote British values across the globe, has been transformed, both through its engagements with an increasingly diverse set of diasporic audiences and through the transformations in how diasporas themselves self-define and operate. On the BBC WS, demographic, social, and cultural changes mean that the global is now to be found in the local of the UK and any simplistic separation of local and global is no longer tenable. The educative role once adopted by the BBC, and then the World Service, nevertheless still persists in other contexts (“from Ambridge to Afghanistan”), and clearly the WS still treads a dangerous path between the paternalism and patriarchy of its colonial past and its responsiveness to change. 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