A.S.I.A

This essay looks at the life of Jessie, a Palestinian refugee, photographed by Robin Hammond as a part of the Where Love is Illegal project. We connect Jessie’s life experiences as she comes to terms with her sexual and gender identity in a stigmatized refugee camp and discriminatory society in her host country with insights from Sara Ahmed’s paper “Affective Economy”

Norms are a catalyst of change in the behavior of states and entities. Exploring this relationship, this essay takes a realist perspective to understand the behavior of transnational entities when they are faced with contrasting cultures of normative ideals. Through a case study of the racist ad campaign by Dunkin Donuts, this essay argues that it’s contrasting normative positions led to erasures of connected memory that led to the double marginalization of the black community.

Despite the waning of global support on the US-led War on Drugs, The norms of anti-drug and anti-addict practices have been rapidly adopted by states in the global south, particularly Latin America. Beyond a shift in rhetoric regarding these practices, The only visible shift in offering a solution in aiding the normalization of these norms appears to lie in a drug policy that actively seeks to take care of its citizens, its addicts, one offered up by the state of Portugal.

This photo essay captures a deep fake of Jackie Kennedy taking a selfie and drawing on this, we analyse the evolving role of self-image and social media in International Relations

The photo makes us revisit the past and trace the norm of wearing a mask through the century. Today’s universal pervasiveness of this norm is a significant indicator of international norm establishment at an accelerated pace.