New Issue of Correspondence Explores Shifting Identities Around the World

December 10, 2002 — The latest issue of the Council’s semiannual publication, Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society, explores changing ideas about citizenship and immigration, rising anti-Americanism, and a renewed interest in global income inequality.

For example, in “MEMRI Gains,” the Washington-based think tank MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute)—a massive translation operation distributed mostly through the Internet—breaks through the fog of misinformation by opening up the previously closed world of the Arab press.

In “Fashioning the Military-Entertainment Complex,” a new profit of war emerges, as Hollywood and the video-game industry join forces with the Pentagon to market war games.

Meanwhile, debate in Japan ensues over a current fad—hair dye. In “The Last or the First of the Mohicans,” Japanese youth bring diversity and individuality to the front-lines of national debate with their chapatsu (literally, “brown hair”).

In related articles on surprising reactions to growing inequality, Correspondenc surveys societies as diverse as the United States, Japan, China, India, Africa, and Bhutan. This issue also continues to examine art, literature, and language, featuring a report on the politics of language reform in Russia and one on the phenomenon of talking backwards in France; a report on Latin American literature and one on the return of the South Korean cinema.

Other pieces of general interest cover Japan’s reaction to the recent Soccer World Cup; France’s ambivalence about cloning and genetic engineering; Germany’s love-hate relationship with American pop culture; and the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to transmit truth through a media that often transforms from observers to participants within its enduring conflict.

Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society has become a vital source of un- and under-reported cultural news, information, and analysis from a global perspective, for which the publication’s contributors scour periodicals, academic literature, and belles-lettres from around the world.