Despite the description of the March 11, 2011 disaster as “outside safety expectations”, there were multiple warnings from Japanese scientists, writers, activists, and international bodies that a large earthquake and tsunami could cripple Japan's nuclear plants. This article examines how assumptions of nuclear safety remained strong in Japan from the 1950s until the 2000s, even after numerous accidents that demonstrated inadequate oversight, and ties these assumptions to technological nationalism at the heart of Japan's conservative political culture.

Digital innovations in insurance, ‘InsurTech’, bring together two transformational forces in our contemporary world – risk and digitization. InsurTech has been celebrated and criticized. A literature on the social studies of insurance provides valuable and more nuanced insights into the social, cultural, and technological properties of InsurTech but it tends to analyze these at the firm level. This article brings together themes from assemblage and international political economy theories to integrate analysis of the structure of the global industry and the role of cross-border regulatory arrangements with the firm-level insights of the social studies of insurance literature. The article examines differentiation in the industry structure between stages of the insurance value chain, between incumbent and start-up insurers and Big Tech, and across jurisdictions and regions. It also examines the most globally significant regulatory responses to InsurTech: from the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the US National Association of Insurance Commissioners. It shows that the nuance and ethical content that is evident at the firm level in the social studies of insurance literature is interacting with similar nuance and ethical content in global regulatory arrangements.

The academic imprint of Susan Strange, long considered a pioneer in the field of IPE, no longer resonates with contemporary debates about the organization and structure of the global political economy. We argue that her analytical framework continues to be a productive way to think about important current developments, most importantly in relation to what can now be called the digital age and its emergent form of capitalism. We therefore modify and update Strange’s framework to highlight its unique analytical potential, and to set out the operational principles of what we want to call a ‘neo-Strangean’ framework of authority. We then apply it to what Strange identifies as the finance or credit structure. By focusing on a core domain of political-economic power, we demonstrate our principal claim that a neo-Strangean framework of authority points towards an understanding of how new actors and imperatives are reshaping the global political economy. We close by outlining the analytical benefits that a neo-Strangean research agenda promises for the field of IPE, which for us centre on emphasizing the dynamics and disruptive consequences of a knowledge-infused global political economy in a way that pays sufficient attention to ideational and material factors.

This paper explores the evolution of the concept of peace in the context of a globalized and digitalized 21st century, proposing a novel vision that shifts from viewing peace as a thing or a condition, to understanding peace as dynamic and relational process that emerges through human interactions. Building on - yet also going beyond - traditional definitions of peace as something to be found through inner reflection (virtue ethics), as the product of reason, contracts and institutions (Enlightenment philosophy), and as the absence of different forms of violence (modern peace research), this paper introduces a new meso-level theory on networks, emphasizing the importance of connections, interactions and relationships in the physical and online worlds. The paper is structured around three main objectives: conceptualizing relational peace in terms of the quantity and quality of interactions, mapping these interactions into networks of peace, and examining how these networks interact with their environment, including the influence of digital transformation and artificial intelligence. By integrating insights from ethical and peace research literature, the paper makes theoretical, conceptual, and methodological contributions towards understanding peace as an emergent property of human behavior. Through this innovative approach, the paper aims to provide clarity on how peace (and violence) emerges through interactions and relations in an increasingly networked and digitalized global society, offering a foundation for future empirical research and concerted policy action in this area. It highlights the need for bridging normative and descriptive sciences to better understand and promote peace in the digital age.

Internationally, the home is legally protected as a bastion of private life, where one may retreat to and recollect oneself after a day’s work and enjoy family life. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home – facilitated by new collaborative information and communications technology (ICT) platforms and tools – became mandatory in several countries. For many, the workplace was brought into the home. This article examines how working from home on a mandatory basis during the pandemic affected employees’ perceptions and practices of privacy, and its implications for the legal understanding of privacy. With Norway as a case, it investigates the measures taken by employees and employers to safeguard privacy during this period. The data collection and method combine an interpretation of legal sources with qualitative interviews. The analysis shows experiences and practices that suggest a blurring of roles and physical spaces, and the adoption of boundary-setting measures to safeguard privacy.

Mounting geoeconomic competition between the United States (US) and China alongside the global shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war have drawn significant attention to the instability and vulnerability issues in the global supply chain (GSC), which is critical for international trade, production, and economic security. Can the US, South Korea, and Japan successfully coordinate their efforts to establish a secure and resilient GSC in key industries? Can these efforts promote economic security? By defining the efforts to reshape the GSC as part of the US–China power competition, this study evaluates the impact of its restructuring around the US on various aspects of the economic and national security of South Korea and Japan. Overall, the findings highlight that restructuring the GSC poses complex challenges for South Korea and its foreign policy in the contemporary globalization era.

While the effects of technological change on deskilling and upskilling of the contemporary labor force have been intensely debated among economists and sociologists, historians have been more or less silent. Here, we historicize this debate by applying a set of HISCO-based measures to a recently homogenized set of aggregated census data for men in Italy from 1871 to 2011, coded in HISCO, to study the effects of waves of technological changes. With the transition from agriculture, via industry to services, we identify the main subprocesses and study occupational diversity and specialization, class formation, and skill development. The first industrial revolution saw modest growth in lower-skilled work in Italy, and a decline in unskilled work; the second, growth in lower- and higher-skilled work, and a decline in medium and unskilled work; the third, growth in lower- and higher-skilled work.

This article examines the often-noted “cuteness” in early post-war Japanese animation, and explains how this style has led in more recent years to grittier works depicting war's devastation through fantasy and cinematic technology. Anime provides insight into the social attitudes of each post-war era; and, into how collective memory has processed “unimaginable” horror. The author argues that what is concealed within “unrealistic” animation often reveals more than what is shown about people grappling with an apocalyptic legacy in search of a national identity.

This study explores the emergence and dispersal of grog-tempered pottery in south-eastern Europe, particularly southern Romania. During the second half of the sixth millennium bc, a dynamic zone emerged between the Danube and the Carpathians, facilitating the spread of innovations through multiple communication routes. Among these innovations, grog-tempered pottery began to appear around 5300/5000 bc and became prevalent during the fifth millennium. Despite being frequent, its origins, dispersal, and intensity remain poorly understood. This article aims to trace and explain the emergence and distribution of grog-tempered pottery in southern Romania. By integrating data from existing literature with new results from macroscopic and archaeometric analyses of twelve pottery assemblages from Middle Neolithic, Early, and Middle Chalcolithic sites, the author seeks to provide insights into the significance of the first grog-tempered pottery in a south-eastern European context.