Rethinking Queer (Asian) Studies: Geopolitics, Covid-19, and Post-Covid Queer Theories and Mobilities

This paper considers queer studies in the global geopolitical hotspot of Asia, as well as how we can reimagine queer theories through both the Covid-19 pandemic and the intensified regional and global superpower competition and geopolitical tensions. It argues for a rethinking of queer studies through today's international relations and geopolitical complications in a sociological political economy. The aim is to connect critical studies with analyses of economic and social class structures, an approach that has been substantiated by the current crises, and to present an expanded queer mobility theory with two brief case studies (mini-critiques) of the current socioeconomic conditions facing marginalized people under Covid-19 and the changing geopolitical landscape. In so doing, this paper actively explores what queer studies can do and can be through the current historical turning point of the pandemic and geopolitical rivalry toward potential post-Covid socioeconomic revival and recovery.

Points of departure and developing good practices for responsible internationalization in a rapidly changing world

Responsible internationalization is a term increasingly used to promote relationship building in a world shaped by the growing impact of global challenges and geopolitical competition. In these changing global conditions, researchers and universities have learned that they need to adhere to an expanded set of research norms. Today these norms include aspects well known to researchers, such as research integrity, academic freedom, openness, research excellence, and research ethics, but also newer aspects related to societal impact, research security, and science diplomacy. However, managing these aspects is complicated by the fact that they are quite contradictory in tandem. Hence the term responsible internationalization has been used to raise awareness of the changing conditions for academic research and induce more responsible research practices. Nonetheless, the term presently lacks systemization and agreed definitions driving clear narratives, well-articulated goals, or structured responses and behavioral changes. This paper seeks to clarify some of the underlying premises and strategies in working with responsible internationalization and a way forward to the development of clearer guidelines.

Turkey's quest to become a regional energy hub: Challenges and opportunities

Despite its relatively modest domestic energy resources, Turkey plays a central role in the global geopolitics of energy. Situated between energy-rich areas of the Middle East and energy-consuming Europe, it is no surprise that Turkey has become a crucial transit route for fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Furthermore, in recent decades, Turkey's leadership has pursued an ambitious plan to transform the country into a regional energy hub. This vision encompasses Turkey as a place where energy resources are not only transited but also sold and bought by international sellers and buyers. The study offers a historical overview of major transboundary oil and natural gas energy projects in Turkey, including both successful and failed endeavors and those in prospect. It delves into Turkey's aspirations to establish itself as a regional energy trade spot, a crucial component of its foreign policy agenda aimed at bolstering its influence on the regional and global stage. The paper also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Turkey's ambition to become a regional energy nexus and its feasibility. The study highlights Turkey's potentially significant role in enhancing energy security for Europe, especially in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the European Union's efforts to reduce its dependence on energy from Russia.

Unwitting Agents: Representations of Chinese International Students in US-China Geopolitics

As part of a larger study, this paper presents findings from my exploration of discourses about China-US geopolitics through popular discussions on Chinese international students (CIS) who are attending American universities during the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. The study seeks to advance scholarship for international students attending American colleges, with particular implications for Chinese students, as agents of geopolitical relations. In doing so, it investigates (a) how these students are represented in American media and (b) the criticality of international geopolitics in the mobility of international students. The findings reveal that American popular media sources assume a tone when writing about CIS that may stem from a deeper anti-Chinese sentiment that exists in the US. They also suggest that American institutions of higher education, and American companies that employ CIS after graduation, treat these students as imported subjects/objects that support America's intellectual and economic advancement. In doing so, the media perpetuates narratives of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, while representing CIS as unwitting agents of those tensions. The study seeks to advance scholarship on international students attending US colleges, particularly those from China, during an era of rising populism and right-wing movements in the US coupled with rapidly deteriorating US-China relations.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12140-023-09409-5.

New insights into projected Arctic sea road: operational risks, economic values, and policy implications

As Arctic sea ice continues to retreat, the seasonally navigable Arctic expected by mid-century or earlier is likely to facilitate the growth of polar maritime and coastal development. Here, we systematically explore the potentials for opening of trans-Arctic sea routes across a range of emissions futures and multi-model ensembles on daily timescales. We find a new Transpolar Sea Route in the western Arctic for open water vessels starting in 2045 in addition to the central Arctic corridor over the North Pole, with its frequency comparable to the latter during the 2070s under the worst-case scenario. The emergence of this new western route could be decisive for operational and strategic outcomes. Specifically, the route redistributes transits away from the Russian-administered Northern Sea Route, lowering the navigational and financial risks and the regulatory friction. Navigational risks arise from narrow straits that are often icy choke points. Financial risks arise from the substantial interannual sea ice variability and associated uncertainty. Regulatory friction arises from Russian requirements imposed under the Polar Code and Article 234 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. These imposts are significantly reduced with shipping route regimes that enable open water transits wholly outside Russian territorial waters, and these regimes are revealed most accurately using daily ice information. The near-term navigability transition period (2025-2045) may offer an opportunity for maritime policy evaluation, revision, and action. Our user-inspired evaluation contributes towards achieving operational, economic and geopolitical objectives and serves the goal of planning a resilient, sustainable, and adaptive Arctic future.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-023-03505-4.

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

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

Mapping a Country Image from Global News Reports about COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide and caused millions of deaths. This study used media analysis and correlation analysis to elucidate the significant differences in the ways in which news reports from 228 countries discussed a specific country when covering the COVID-19 pandemic. Media reports analysed in this study were collected from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone project (GDELT). These differences were found to be deeply embedded in the economic, socio-political, and cultural contexts of different countries. The findings reinforced the hypothetical assumption in framing theory and promoted a measurable and upscaled use of framing theory into macro geography studies. This study highlights the urgent need of a geo-political examination of COVID-19 in the global context-an area with insufficient interest from interdisciplinary perspective beyond epidemiology. Further research can be of great value for the promotion of an effective international cooperation mechanism to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12061-022-09498-4.

The Geopolitics of Health Science Research Comment on "The Roles of Regional Organisations in Strengthening Health Research Systems in Africa: Activities, Gaps, and Future Perspectives"

African development is defined by a number of meta-trends, including climate disruption, digitalisation, informalisation, regionalisation and most recently the impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The paper under consideration here is informed primarily by two of these: regionalism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Africa, or at least parts of it, have been severely affected by pandemics in recent decades. At the same time deepening regionalisation allows for more coordinated and effective actions to mitigate their worst effects. However, to date, regional integration efforts have not generally delivered desired results, and in the area of Health Science Research (HSciR) specifically, which is the area of focus for this paper. This important paper considers the nature of current activities in relation to health research by regional organizations on the continent. It provides a baseline study and incipient manifesto for increased effectiveness and greater contribution in the area of HSciR on the continent.

Immigration Politics and Policymaking in the USA (2017-2021): Examining the Effect of Geopolitics on Public Attitude Towards Immigration Policies

Previous attitudinal studies on immigration in the USA largely focus on the predictors of anti-immigration sentiments compared to examining immigration policies. The dearth of scientific enquiry about the latter necessitated the present study. By analyzing individual-level data (n = 1018) obtained from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), we assess the effect of geopolitics-red and blue states and other factors on public attitude towards six immigration policies in the USA (2017-2021). Overall, the results indicate a null relationship between geopolitics and public attitude towards immigration policies. Additionally, we observed several sociodemographic factors, such as age, political ideology, party affiliation, and region, influence public attitude towards immigration policies. Based on these results, it is recommended that immigration policies formulated and implemented in the USA must be based on empirical evidence and not sentiments.

[Deglobalization, reconfiguration, or business as usual? COVID-19 and the limits of reshoring of globalized productionDéglobalisation, reconfiguration ou business as usual ? COVID-19 et les limites de la relocalisation de production mondialisée]

The economic difficulties following the COVID-19 pandemic have seemingly reinforced the need for geographic restructuring and a reshoring of production, as they have demonstrated the vulnerability of globalized production. This article provides an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the geographies of production. Criticizing overly simplified perspectives on globalization, the article argues that global production networks are multiscalar and politically shaped phenomena. Based on these theoretical considerations and case studies on the automotive, electronics and clothing industries, the article concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be interpreted as a trigger for a general retreat from global manufacturing, but it reinforced longer-standing shifts toward more multipolar production and consumption structures. While the issue of global production network resilience has attracted greater attention in corporate strategies and industrial policies, the localization and regionalization of production networks is only one of several strategies, and it has hardly been implemented so far. Ongoing disruptions of supply chains, increased transport costs, and, above all, geopolitically and environmentally motivated policies could well lead to greater re- or nearshoring. Political efforts in this direction are, however, limited by pre-existing global economic development paths and the balance of power associated with them. In the conclusions, the article stresses the necessity of a politically motivated restructuring of global production networks in the context of an urgently needed social-ecological transformation.

Editorial Introduction: The Shifting Geopolitics of Return Migration and Reintegration

The recent geo-politicisation of return migration warrants deep consideration of the politics of return and reintegration. A focus on geopolitics prefigures the study of reintegration not just as circumstantial to the lives of migrants or the formal strategies of states but also as deeply embedded in the historical socio-cultural and political contexts where it takes place. In introducing a set of papers that explore these links from different angles and based on research from around the world, this article argues that return and reintegration constitute a qualitatively different process from immigration and integration in the receiving countries, first and foremost because the sending state—a key actor in the reintegration process—is in a position of geopolitical power marginality. Indeed, the strategies of all the stakeholders implicated in reintegration are closely linked to the geopolitics of migration governance. In these contexts, migrants’ intimate, as well as pragmatic, strategies of reintegration and re-migration are an expression, as well as a trigger, of multi-scale geopolitics. There is a distinct contrast between the emphasis on borders and securitisation in high-income countries and the informality and precarity of the way that migrants have to manage their ontological security in the process of return and reintegration. Reintegration should thus be understood as a process contingent upon different and, often, incongruous legal, political and socio-economic elements, as endorsed and employed by the different stakeholders involved.

Between Simians and Cell Lines: Rhesus Monkeys, Polio Research, and the Geopolitics of Tissue Culture (1934-1954)

This essay argues that the racialized geopolitics of the rhesus monkey trade conditioned the trajectory of tissue culture in polio research. Rhesus monkeys from north India were important experimental organisms in the American "war against polio" between the 1930s and 1950s. During this period, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) expended considerable effort to secure the nonhuman primate for researchers' changing experimental agendas. The NFIP drew on transnational networks to export hundreds of thousands of rhesus monkeys from colonial and later postcolonial India amid the geopolitical upheavals of World War II, the 1947 Partition, and the Cold War. In this essay, I trace how NFIP officials' anxieties about the geopolitics of the monkey trade configured research imperatives in the war against polio. I show how their anxieties more specifically shaped investment in tissue culture techniques as a possible means of obviating dependence on the market in monkeys. I do so by offering a genealogy of the contingent convergence between the use of rhesus monkeys and HeLa cell cultures in the 1954 Salk vaccine trial evaluation. Through this genealogy, I emphasize the geopolitical dimensions of the search for the "right" experimental organisms, tissues, and cells for the "job" of scientific research. The technical transformation of polio research, I argue, relied on the convergence of disparate, racialized biomedical economies.

Post-purchase Federal Financial Aid: How (in)Effective is the IRS's Student Loan Interest Deduction (SLID) in Reaching Lower-Income Taxpayers and Students?

Federal financial aid policies for higher education may be classified based on their "for-purchase" and "post-purchase" natures. The former include grants, loans, and workstudy and intend to help students finance or afford college attendance, persistence, and graduation. Post-purchase policies are designed to minimize financial burdens associated with having invested in college attendance and are granted as tax incentives/expenditures. One of these expenditures is the IRS's Student Loan Interest Deduction (SLID)-which offers up to $2500 as an adjustment for taxable income based on having paid interest on student loans and has an annual cost of $12.81 billion-about 45.7% of the Pell grant cost. Despite this high cost, SLID has remained virtually unstudied. Accordingly, the study's purpose is to assess how (in)effective SLID may be in reaching lower-income taxpayers. To address this purpose, we relied on an innovative analytic framework "multilevel modelling with spatial interaction effects" that allowed controlling for contextual and systemic observed and unobserved factors that may both affect college participation and may be related with SLID disbursements over and above income prospects. Data sources included the IRS, ACS, FBI, IPEDS, and the NPSAS:2015-2016. Findings revealed that SLID is regressive at the top, wealthier taxpayers and students attending more expensive colleges realize higher tax benefits than lower income taxpayers and students. Indeed, 75% of community college students were found to not be eligible to receive SLID-data and replication code (https://cutt.ly/COyfdKC) are provided. Is this the best use of this multibillion tax incentive? Is SLID designed to exclude the poorest, neediest students? A policy similar to Education Credits, focused on outstanding debt rather than on interest, that targets below-poverty line students with up to $5000 in debt, would represent a true commitment, and better use of public funds, to close socioeconomic gaps, by helping those more prone to default.

Societal implications of a changing Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean is undergoing rapid change: sea ice is being lost, waters are warming, coastlines are eroding, species are moving into new areas, and more. This paper explores the many ways that a changing Arctic Ocean affects societies in the Arctic and around the world. In the Arctic, Indigenous Peoples are again seeing their food security threatened and cultural continuity in danger of disruption. Resource development is increasing as is interest in tourism and possibilities for trans-Arctic maritime trade, creating new opportunities and also new stresses. Beyond the Arctic, changes in sea ice affect mid-latitude weather, and Arctic economic opportunities may re-shape commodities and transportation markets. Rising interest in the Arctic is also raising geopolitical tensions about the region. What happens next depends in large part on the choices made within and beyond the Arctic concerning global climate change and industrial policies and Arctic ecosystems and cultures.

China's "Weaponized" Vaccine: Intertwining Between International and Domestic Politics

Ever since China has formally joined the WHO-backed global COVID-19 vaccine initiative known as COVAX, there is a presumed notion that China's vaccine diplomacy will make a significant contribution to the international public good and thus uplift Beijing's role as the rule-maker of international order. To scrutinize this, the paper asks if China succeeded in proliferating its weaponized vaccine policy to obtain maximum diplomatic gains and soft power projection to intensify its international image, geopolitical power, and domestic politico legitimacy. The authors argue that despite its vaccine diplomacy demonstrated the robust governance capacity and responsibility to be a great power. Yet, Beijing's geopolitical influence and international image are significantly overrated and not enough to play a more prominent role in the global power fulcrum/equilibrium. On the contrary, China enjoys a leading position on the domestic political front. Its successful portrayal of China's vaccine provision in the global market and remarkable configuration to leverage a deep-rooted nationalism has fundamentally provided China with a powerful rationale to divert its public's attention from Beijing's earlier inadequate handling of the outbreak. The evaluation of the paper reveals that China's vaccine diplomacy's influence in promoting international image and geopolitics is limited but has successfully stabilized its domestic political environment and enhanced its domestic legitimacy.

The Politics of Imagery: Understanding the Historical Genesis of Sinophobia in Pacific Geopolitics

The weaponization of racialized imagery has been a common feature of geopolitical contestation in contemporary history. The paper critically examines the historical genesis of Sinophobic narratives, which have been common features of the big power geopolitical contestation in the Pacific. The globalization of capitalism in the nineteenth century and the West's attempts to penetrate the Chinese market and exploitation of its resources led to tension, skirmishes and wars. The myth of racial European superiority and corresponding inferiority of the Chinese was weaponized as an ideological justification for colonial domination, exploitation of cheap labour and appropriation of China's resources and wealth. In recent years, the Sinophobic paranoia has been exacerbated by China's Belt and Road initiative, a strategy at global economic and technological supremacy to counter the West's dominance. This competition for global hegemony is played out in various parts of the world and the Pacific included. The paper critically discusses various historical factors associated with Sinophobia in the context of the USA, France and Australia and how these have influenced these countries' contemporary approaches to Chinese expansionism.

The Forgotten Lives of Sociology of Death: Remembering Du Bois, Martineau and Wells

This article seeks to rewrite the genealogy of sociology of death by revisiting the history of sociology, from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. Providing an overview of sociological studies of death that consolidated into a subfield in the 1990s, it shows how recent attempts at including intersectional and decolonial approaches link with considerations of death in sociology's early history. Engaging sociological thinkers Harriet Martineau, Émile Durkheim, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, the article seeks to provide an alternate genealogy of the sociology of death and to make a case for mainstreaming the study of death within the discipline. It shows that questions of suicide and Black death were a significant part of these scholars' writings and that attention to loss and mourning shaped emergent understandings of the social, sociological frameworks, and methodologies. This view supplements efforts toward encouraging intersectional and geopolitical approaches to the study of death in sociology, approaches that are more needed than ever before to contend with the scale of loss and suffering that is filling lives.

Is geopolitics a threat for offshore wind energy? A case of Indian Ocean Region

The aim of this paper is to drive the discourse towards the increasing shift to renewables, especially offshore wind energy generation, in the emerging international energy order. The Indian Ocean Region (IOR), despite its increasing contribution to onshore wind energy generation and impending policies on offshore wind energy, is reluctant to invest in the latter. Hence, this paper highlights four important aspects that challenge IOR's offshore wind energy development: Indian Ocean's strategic location, environment impacts, blue economy and maritime terrorism. In the background of the geopolitical rivalry existing in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), with the increasing presence of China and the USA in the Indian Ocean, this paper aims to study if these geopolitical challenges are hindering offshore wind energy generation in IOR. The key findings of the paper include the necessity of addressing the geopolitical rivalry in IOR as an important hindrance in huge investments needed in OWE farms, so that a regional cooperative mechanism is arrived at especially from the point of view of policies towards OWE generation.

The new oil? The geopolitics and international governance of hydrogen

While most hydrogen research focuses on the technical and cost hurdles to a full-scale hydrogen economy, little consideration has been given to the geopolitical drivers and consequences of hydrogen developments. The technologies and infrastructures underpinning a hydrogen economy can take markedly different forms, and the choice over which pathway to take is the object of competition between different stakeholders and countries. Over time, cross-border maritime trade in hydrogen has the potential to fundamentally redraw the geography of global energy trade, create a new class of energy exporters, and reshape geopolitical relations and alliances between countries. International governance and investments to scale up hydrogen value chains could reduce the risk of market fragmentation, carbon lock-in, and intensified geo-economic rivalry.

Scientific globalism during a global crisis: research collaboration and open access publications on COVID-19

This study sought to understand the nature of scientific globalism during a global crisis, particularly COVID-19. Findings show that scientific globalism occurs differently when comparing COVID-19 publications with non-COVID-19 publications during as well as before the pandemic. Despite the tense geopolitical climate, countries increased their proportion of international collaboration and open-access publications during the pandemic. However, not all countries engaged more globally. Countries that have been more impacted by the crisis and those with relatively lower GDPs tended to participate more in scientific globalism than their counterparts.

The strategic geographies of global health partnerships

Global health partnerships have been hailed as a means of addressing the global health worker shortage, bringing forth health systems strengthening and, therefore, the universal health coverage aspirations of the Sustainable Development Goals. In contrast to other critical engagements with partnerships which have tended to focus on experiences and effects of these partnerships in situ; this paper draws on the example of the UK to explore how partnership working and development agendas have become entwined. Moreover, this entwinement has ensured that GHPs are far from the "global" endeavour that might be expected of global health and instead exhibit geographies that are far more representative of the geopolitics of overseas development assistance than biomedical need.

Effect of Geopolitical Forces on Neurosurgical Training in Sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUND

The population of Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a critical shortage and maldistribution of health care professionals, especially highlighted in surgical subspecialties, such as neurosurgery. In light of The Lancet report and the World Health Organization's directive to provide essential surgical care through the developing world, solutions need to be found to close this training and distribution gap.

METHODS

Methods correcting the situation will only succeed if one understands the geopolitical forces which have shaped the distribution of health care in the region and continue to this day. Solutions have evolved from service to service with education. The partnering organizations, the Foundation of International Education in Neurological Surgery and the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, have supported neurosurgical training in the developing world, including curriculum, equipment, facilities, certification, and local acceptance, with a goal of developing a self-sustaining program within the developing country.

RESULTS

These ideas heavily rely on partnerships to address classic geopolitical forces, including geography, drought, warfare, ethnic tensions, poverty, and lack of training facilities. Each can be addressed through partnerships, such as development of dyads with programs in developed countries and ongoing programs owned by the countries in question, but partnered with multiple international societies, institutions, and universities.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper provides both a historic and topical overview of the forces at work which need to be addressed for success in delivering specialized care. This must always result in a self-sustaining program operated by the people of the home country with worldwide support through philanthropy and partnerships.