Overview
- Elevates the historically neglected 'rise of Japan' to scholarly discourse on 'the rise of China' and on power shifts
- Promotes a conceptualization of identity that challenges the dichotomy of 'ideational' (identity) and 'material' (economic) factors
- Proposes that rhetorical political analysis (RPA) can be used to implement political discourse theory (PDT) in empirical research
Part of the book series: Global Political Sociology (GLPOSO)
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About this book
This book has four main objectives: to bring the thus far almost entirely neglected historical case of ‘the rise of Japan’ into the literature on power shifts in general and ‘the rise of China’ in particular; to propose a discourse-based conceptualization of identity for the study of economic policy that engages theoretical and methodological debates on how to overcome the dichotomy between ‘ideational’ (identity) and ‘material’ (economic) factors; to address the tendency to focus on the ‘radical Other’ in poststructuralist IR scholarship, by highlighting how heterogeneity disturbs exclusive and binary articulations of identity and difference; and to propose a method for putting political discourse theory (PDT) into practice in empirical research by drawing on rhetorical political analysis (RPA). US congressional debates on economic policy on Japan and China in 1985–2008 are analysed as examples of official US elite public discourse. The book shows that the ‘new era’ in US-Chinese relations that scholars and policymakers have been announcing since the beginning of the Trump presidency was long in the making, as it rests on longstanding discourses on the USA’s main economic competitor.
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Keywords
Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Part II
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
'Nymalm’s book convincingly shows that both the “China threat” today and the “Japan problem” of the 1980s in the US economic discourses are reflective of a problem closer to home: those countries’ perceived economic threats to the US cannot be fully understood unless we also examine their origins in the ways the US constructs itself through American exceptionalism and the liberal theory of history. Providing much-needed insight into ongoing US-China tensions, this sophisticated, historically grounded analysis makes a timely and thoughtprovoking contribution to the burgeoning literature on great power competition.’ — Chengxin Pan, Associate Professor of International Relations, Deakin University, Australia
‘Nymalm insightfully challenges the usually bipolar discussions on identity and difference and operationalises poststructuralist discourse theory with rhetorical political analysis to connect US foreign policy discourse back to the rise of Japan andUS-Chinese economic relations.’
‘Nymalm insightfully challenges the usually bipolar discussions on identity and difference and operationalises poststructuralist discourse theory with rhetorical political analysis to connect US foreign policy discourse back to the rise of Japan andUS-Chinese economic relations.’
— Emilia Palonen, Senior Lecturer, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Nicola Nymalm is an Assistant Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University and an Associate Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Her previous work has appeared in journals such as International Political Sociology, International Studies Review, Journal of International Relations and Development and Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: From 'Japan Problem' to 'China Threat'?
Book Subtitle: Rising Powers in US Economic Discourse
Authors: Nicola Nymalm
Series Title: Global Political Sociology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44951-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44950-6Published: 17 July 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44953-7Published: 17 July 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-44951-3Published: 16 July 2020
Series ISSN: 2946-5559
Series E-ISSN: 2946-5567
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 244
Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations
Topics: International Relations Theory, Globalization, Foreign Policy, International Security Studies, International Political Economy