‘Soft power is such a benign animal’: narrative power and the reification of concepts in Japan

Winkler, Stephanie Christine

doi:10.1080/09557571.2019.1623171

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…We examine the scholar as narrator operating through the creation and deployment of powerful conceptual IR narratives that not only represent, but also select and restrain, our knowledges of the world and the identities and motivations of the actors within it. We further show how these narratives transcend the discipline, connecting to and permeating political practice (see Winkler 2019;Gustafsson et al 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

Turner

Nymalm

2019

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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Scholars debate the ambitions and policies of today's 'rising powers' and the extent to which they are revising or upholding the international status quo. While elements of the relevant literature provide valuable insight, this article argues that the concepts of revisionism and the status quo within mainstream International Relations (IR) have always constituted deeply rooted, autobiographical narratives of a traditionally Western-dominated discipline. As 'ordering narratives' of morality and progress, they constrain and organize debate so that revisionism is typically conceived not merely as disruption, but as disruption from the non-West amidst a fundamentally moral Western order that represents civilizational progress. This often makes them inherently problematic and unreliable descriptors of the actors and behaviours they are designed to explain. After exploring the formations and development of these concepts throughout the IR tradition, the analysis is directed towards narratives around the contemporary 'rise' of China. Both scholarly and wider political narratives typically tell the story of revisionist challenges China presents to a US/Western-led status quo, promoting unduly binary divisions between the West and non-West, and tensions and suspicions in the international realm. The aim must be to develop a new language and logic that recognize the contingent, autobiographical nature of 'revisionist' and 'status quo' actors and behaviours.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

Turner

Nymalm

2019

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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“…The soft power concept has been particularly popular in two distinct contexts. First, observers who value diplomacy, multilateralism, international institutions and democratic values – that is, observers with an attachment to liberal international values – embraced the concept early on, as such issues were typically portrayed as important sources of soft power (Winkler 2019 ). Second, soft power has also been influential in authoritarian states, including China (Barr et al 2015 ).…”

Section: Rhetoric and Public Legitimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Winkler

Jerdén

2023

J Int Relat Dev

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

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“…Narratives urging Japan to become normal also appear in academic works published inside and outside Japan, highlighting the role of scholars as narrators (see Winkler 2019). These publications rarely problematize the notion of normality, beyond its constant differentiation from 'pacifism' and the idea that 'normal states' should have security and defence policies different from that of post-war Japan-for example by allowing participation in collective selfdefence (Hughes 2004;Miller 2005Miller /2006Glosserman and Snyder 2008;Liff 2015).…”

Section: The Anti-pacifist Narrative In the Post-cold-war Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long live pacifism! Narrative power and Japan’s pacifist model

Gustafsson

Hagström

Hanssen

2019

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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International relations research acknowledges that states can have different security policies but neglects the fact that 'models' may exist in the security policy realm. This article suggests that it is useful to think about models, which it argues can become examples for emulation or be undermined through narrative power. It illustrates the argument by analysing Japan's pacifism-an alternative approach to security policy which failed to become an internationally popular model and, despite serving the country well for many years, has even lost its appeal in Japan. Conventional explanations suggest that Japan's pacifist policies were 'abnormal', and that the Japanese eventually realized this. By contrast, this article argues that narratives undermined Japan's pacifism by mobilizing deep-seated beliefs about what is realistic and unrealistic in international politics, and launches a counter-narrative that could help make pacifism a more credible model in world politics.

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‘Soft power is such a benign animal’: narrative power and the reification of concepts in Japan

Cited by 12 publications

References 37 publications

Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

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

Long live pacifism! Narrative power and Japan’s pacifist model

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