Political Agency Research Articles

Provincialising Alappad’s Nationalistic Gaze: A Spatial Complexity Siting the ‘South’ Beyond the Metro

We look at Alappad in coastal South India’s Kerala and suggest the spatiality of power as a useful analytic to critique the trend towards nationalistic developmentalism. Recent recognition of the urban beyond metro cities is increasingly framed as a policy-heavy developmentalism. Here, central agencies, think tanks and non-governmental organisations reinforce this form of liberal perspectives, but also, such frames are reinforced by international collaborative projects with researchers of progressive ideological positions seeking to simplistically bring back the welfare state with little understanding of power structures on the ground. Here, groups termed at risk and marginal in line with ideas of southern epistemologies emphasise their political agency as particular constellations and varied material realms. To counter these ideas, we focus on the spatialities associated with various material practices. Without this, attempts to provincialise development in contexts such as Alappad are essentialising and de-politicising.

Dispelling Myths: A Decolonial Framework to Engage Marginalized Histories

Abstract This article examines how the work of Paulo Freire and Chela Sandoval can inform historical research in art education. Although a critical historical inquiry inspired by these thinkers does not entail a prescriptive set of guidelines, I identify the following five principles that can inform marginalized histories in art education: acknowledging and deconstructing myths; identifying those who count as historical agents; recognizing events in history as challenges for present actions; situating historical events within a larger fabric of social relations; and acknowledging forms of resistance developed by marginalized groups. I start by situating the work of Freire beyond critical pedagogy, by arguing that when Freire is considered a postcolonial and decolonial thinker, his work can incite critical historical inquiry and methodologies. I draw from the work of Chicana scholar Chela Sandoval to direct attention to the diverse ways in which the oppressed exercise practical and political agency. I seek to add to the array of theoretical resources at the disposal of those interested in identifying how particular histories and educational structures privilege or exclude certain groups, and those wanting to produce knowledge that is politically situated and useful for the transformation of society.

Monumentalizing “The Collective”

Abstract By analyzing the public mural paintings sponsored by the French state to help artists survive the economic crisis around the time of the Popular Front, this article intends to contribute to the study of the relationship between mass politics and mass culture in the 1930s. After addressing French and foreign views on mural art as well as state agendas behind mural commissions, the study examines the social and political significance of state-financed mural projects. Frequently large-scale and realized in a figurative style, murals portrayed collectivities in instants of conviviality and extolled the solidaristic ties binding them. State-financed mural paintings, I contend, monumentalized “the collective” so to create unity and collective spirit. Thereby, they created a visual politics that helped bridge the gap between art and the people and became agents of mass politics at a time of political instability.

The Problem with the Anthropocene: Kainos, Not Anthropos

The Problem with the Anthropocene: <i>Kainos</i>, Not <i>Anthropos</i>

Considering Rhetoric From the Standpoint of Primitive Accumulation

This essay develops a materialist account of rhetoric from the perspective of primitive accumulation. Drawing on biopolitical theory and Marxian discussions of capital's dispossessive practices, we demonstrate how—within the regional context of the Euro-Western tradition—the partition of political space (polis) from the space of the economic household (oikos) operates as a material-discursive apparatus that sorts bodies in relation to a figure of "full" humanity, rationalizing violent accumulation and designating some bodies as a-rhetorical and therefore not fully human. We explore the function of this apparatus in ancient Athenian texts on oikonomia and rhetoric before turning to its rearticulation under contemporary capitalism. We argue that the articulation of oikos, polis, and rhetoric demonstrates the violence underwriting so-called "immaterial" labor as well as contemporary humanist fantasies of political agency.

Nothing is happening

This article explores the importance, and political agency of durational, experiential and process-based creative practice and pedagogical methodologies. I argue these methods resist capitalist models of productivity and efficiency by minimizing the importance of determined outcomes or ‘products’. In turn, this commitment to durational teaching/learning can connect us to different ways of being – promoting a different kind of exchange with the world, and what we expect in return.

Everybody Hates a Tourist: World-Traveling, Epistemic Labor, and Local Citizenship

Prior to the pandemic of 2020, global tourism accounted for over ten percent of global GDP, for a total of $9.6 trillion USD; one in every four jobs created that year, across the globe, was in the travel and tourism sector. And yet the figure of the international tourist is often regarded with an attitude ranging from bemusement to outright contempt so much so that a series of books exists to guide tourists on how to avoid looking or acting like tourists. Why, though, is the figure of the tourist —especially the international tourist— so disreputable? Given the sheer number of such tourists (over 1.4 billion, in 2018 alone) it seems odd to think that there is something shameful or problematic about tourism as a practice. What accounts for our seeming disdain for the tourist, even as so many of us engage in tourism ourselves?There are, of course, many obvious answers to this question. The tourist —especially the international tourist— is often a figure of some wealth and privilege; that tourist is likely to be clumsy, at best, in his or her navigating of a foreign society; and he or she is often likely to be less careful in her caretaking of the physical and social spaces into which she travels, given the fact that she is as it were on vacation. These facts may be enough to engender some antipathy towards the tourist especially one who, as Jarvis Cocker noted thirty years ago, regards the local inhabitants as somehow amusing. Tourists are likely to be —as the British aphorism had it about American GIs— oversexed, overpaid, and over here. In this paper, though, I want to suggest a slightly different story for our ethical disquiet with the figure of the tourist. I will argue that the practice of international tourism raises two distinct sorts of ethical worries —both of which reflect the fact that international tourism requires a local industry in which cultural difference is curated and made consumable by the foreign tourist—. This fact may lead to ethical disquiet, I argue, because it can represent a site at which there is a maldistribution of the benefits and burdens of intercultural conversation; the local who works in the tourism industry must become adept at performing his or her culture for the outsider, while that outsider gains the benefits of intercultural conversation without bearing a similar burden of epistemic labor. A second reason for concern, however, stems from the ways in which this demand for epistemic labor can end up deforming and destabilizing local forms of citizenship and political agency. Those who spend their days performing a debased and simplified version of their cultural identity for outsiders may be, I believe, marked by that effort and their own ability to engage in political conversations with fellow local members may be made more difficult as a result. International tourism, in short, may be a site from which both distributive and political injustices might emerge. These concerns, I should note, may exacerbate already objectionable relationships reflecting colonial legacies of oppression; but they may exist even in the absence of any history of colonialism. The mere fact of a market in the curated experience of cultural difference may be enough to raise these worries; and international tourism, I believe, often involves exactly this form of market.

‘Who owns time?’: Reflecting on the temporal dimension of sustainability with Zapatista and Norwegian educators

ABSTRACT Sustainability involves a temporal dimension connecting the past, the present and the future. This article explores the significance of time for sustainability education. It discusses how the understanding of this temporal dimension shapes humans’ relationship with the world and affects the political engagement of the educator with sustainability and the view of herself as a political agent of change. To do so, the article uses an assemblage methodology inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizome to connect the experiences of Norwegian early childhood educators and members of the Zapatista organization. Using a critical theory lens and Paulo Freire’s views of educators as cultural workers (Freire 2005, 2017), the article explores two aspects of the temporal dimension that educators relate to across contexts. First, time as a resource, conditioning the relation to the present, the day-to day rhythm and work from a Marxist perspective. Secondly, sustainability’s future orientation, with its connections to the political role of the educator as the creator of social reality. The encounters between Zapatista and Norwegian perspectives show how educators’ positions and roles in reflecting upon, engaging with, and reappropriating the notion of time, are central for sustainability education.

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Freiheit neu vorstellen: menschliches Handlungsvermögen in Zeiten der ökologischen Katastrophe

Abstract I address the question of human agency from the perspective of critical social theory, starting from the premise that, today, such theories must focus on the global ecological disaster. I assume, furthermore, that radical societal change is necessary in order to arrest our current disastrous ecological trajectory. Radical societal change calls for a fundamental re-orientation in values globally, on both an individual and collective level. This entails a thorough-going change in perceptions of what it means to lead an ethically good life, including revision of deepseated conceptions of ethical agency, in particular, the idea of individual freedom. Wearing the hat of an engaged theorist, I propose a re-imagining and rearticulation of freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming political agency. Taking social institutions as an example, I discuss non-authoritarian authority as a force for forming and transforming ethical perceptions and attribute a similar non-authoritarian potential to critical social theories, in this case a disclosive one. While a change in ethical perceptions will not be sufficient for the required societal transformation, I claim that it is an integral component of it.

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

AbstractThis paper explores people's acts of disengagement from activist campaign and group spaces in the context of border struggle activism in Germany and the UK as fugitive practices of refusal. These acts of disengagement took the form of remaining silent or intentionally distracted, sleeping during activist meetings, distancing oneself from activist groups during conversations, or completely withdrawing from these spaces. The paper approaches these acts, first, as practices of refusal that expose notions of the political rooted in liberal struggles over power and freedom as not only risky but also inherently self‐defeating and, second, as radically optimistic and vitalising practices of recovery and care that insist on alternative modes of thinking, practising, and experiencing sociality and the political that can inspire us to consider political agency in relation to wider abolitionist projects.

Critical Approaches to Climate Justice, Technology, and Technical Communication Special Issue Introduction

ABSTRACT This special issue amplifies the contributions of technical communicators working on climate justice initiatives across the Majority World. By Majority World, we refer not to a specific geography but to the conditions in which most of humanity lives: lacking economic, social, and/or political agency, and absent adequate institutional access to critical infrastructures. The articles in this issue make explicit the need for TPC scholars to rethink, update, and engage in spaces of environmental injustice.

What can mathematical modelling contribute to a sociology of quantification?

Sociology of quantification has spent relatively less energies investigating mathematical modelling than it has on other forms of quantification such as statistics, metrics, or algorithms based on artificial intelligence. Here we investigate whether concepts and approaches from mathematical modelling can provide sociology of quantification with nuanced tools to ensure the methodological soundness, normative adequacy and fairness of numbers. We suggest that methodological adequacy can be upheld by techniques in the field of sensitivity analysis, while normative adequacy and fairness are targeted by the different dimensions of sensitivity auditing. We also investigate in which ways modelling can inform other instances of quantification as to promote political agency.

Child soldiers in Nepal: re-conceptualizing reintegration and identity

Abstract This article contributes to a critical discussion of practices of child soldier reintegration and scholarship on the topic. Child soldiers' lived experience of reintegration is characterized by an interconnection between their child and adult worlds resulting from their conflict experience, social transition to adulthood and identity. The article provides a primary source of data based on 30 semi-structured interviews with former child soldiers, both boys and girls, from the former Communist Party of Nepal—Maoist. This article makes both practical and theoretical contributions. Firstly, reintegration practices assume that children and adults should be separated based on altogether different needs. However, a child soldiers' reintegration experience is framed by an important social interconnection between their child and adult worlds. Secondly, by theoretically engaging children as both a subject and an agent, this article contributes to a nuanced theorization of identity and agency that defies simplistic categories of victimhood and childhood. Finally, the article advances a new framework called ‘post-conflict identity’ that consists of three interconnected subject positions—victim, participant and political agent—to account for the complex ways that former child soldiers negotiate and respond to different life events and transitions across their conflict and post-conflict lives.

Rats claiming rights? More‐than‐human acts of denizenship in Amsterdam

AbstractThe anthropology of citizenship has sought to understand citizenship beyond formal‐legal definitions, including a focus on how those who are legally without citizenship rights also engage in everyday acts of political claims‐making. While this emphasis on the enactment of citizenship has expanded our understanding of who counts as a political being, it has also been obviously human centered. Might we also understand animals’ acts, their presence and movements, as having the potential to constitute political constituents? This article develops a more‐than‐human perspective on political claims‐making by connecting insights from human‐animal studies to the anthropology of citizenship. We draw on research on rats in Amsterdam to propose an understanding of these animals’ interventions in the urban built environment as more‐than‐human “acts of denizenship.” Focusing on different forms of rat behavior, we analyze rats’ mundane interactions and relations with the city's residents, infrastructure, and other animals as forms of claims‐making. We see the behavior as efforts that are partially recognized by humans and that, as such, can be understood as enacting a relation of denizenship. Such attention to how rats act in and on urban space, we suggest, can help us conceptualize political agency and the formation of political belonging in ways that extend beyond the human.

Democracy in Zuhud Concept: Politics of Articulation of Truth of Gus Mus’ Intelligence Practice in the 2015 NU Congress

This study describes intellectuality as a practice of contesting truth in offering alternative truths aside from the existing truth. This paper aimed to describe how the truth regime is articulated by the subject of knowledge and a political agent, namely Ahmad Mustofa Bisri, in the 2015 NU Congress. At that moment, Gus Mus’ practice of articulating truth by refusing the position of ‘rais aam’ was political. This study questioned how the regime of truth was articulated amid the power contest at the 2015 NU Congress. This study argued that, amid the practice of contesting truth, at the same time, there is a politics of value and idea articulation carried out by an individual who occupies a position as part of the intellectual. It is at the political level of the articulation of truth that novelty is described in this study. This study produced truths using text and context-based discourse analysis methods, including: 1). dismissing ‘hubbud dunya’, 2). fostering ‘mind’ and ‘morality’, and 3). it is strengthening ‘legawing ati’ in dedication. In contrast, the above markers are marker moments that reinforcer the primary marker, namely the regime of zuhud, articulated by Gus Mus by self-regulation (subject position) as ‘ a student’ related to elements of discourse antagonism—the term of ‘kiai’ related to the position of rais aam.

Conflictual cultural politics: unpacking local tensions in three Austrian cities

ABSTRACT In this exploratory paper, we discuss local cultural political tensions in Austria’s three largest cities (Vienna, Graz, and Linz). Against the backdrop of COVID-19, which hampered, yet also created new opportunities to host cultural events in public space, we analyze large-scale cultural events (Vienna and Graz), and a newly emerging cultural policy theme (Linz). Drawing on 30 qualitative interviews with cultural politicians, administrators, cultural producers, and artists (2020–2022), situational mapping, and the analysis of media coverage, we unpack (1) agential conflicts that manifest in unequal access to funding and decision-making; (2) symbolic conflicts that variously instrumentalize culture; (3) procedural conflicts that problematize lack of transparency and collaboration; and (4) spatial conflicts that materialize in diverging views about safety, cleanliness, and ownership of public space between state and self-organized cultural actors. Ultimately, we argue for a conflict-oriented approach to cultural policy to grasp the interrelations between power, agency, and space in cultural politics.

Malaysia’s National Role Conceptions and Transitions of Foreign Policy From Tunku to Mahathir

Reviewing the history and trajectory of Malaysia’s foreign policy, this article highlights national role conceptions (NRCs) during Tunku’s premiership between 1957 and 1968 and the first and second Mahathir tenures of 1981–2003 and 2018–2020, respectively. Malaysia’s foreign policy and its fundamentals have remained reasonably stable over prolonged periods but NRCs, which define foreign policy, have witnessed shifting nuances and noticeable changes under different premierships. Foreign policy under succeeding Malaysian governments has seen major shifts occurring in the transition of foreign policy in tandem with changing NRCs. Malaysian foreign policy is articulated within the constraints posed by the global and regional environments and that of a highly politicised, often divided domestic landscape. In the Tunku era, Malaysia was decidedly a Western ally, symbolised by NRCs of being “pro-West” and “anti-communist”. Since then, Malaysia’s relations with major powers and regional countries have shown a stable, neutral and non-aligned stance and it emerged as a “regional neutral strategist” under the premiership of Tun Abdul Razak. This article argues that the shifts and revisions in Malaysia’s NRCs under Mahathir as a “global champion of the South”, exemplar of “Looking East” and “champion of moderate Islam” were not all just outcomes of elite preferences but reflected political agendas of elites and political agents within the domestic political game. Drawing on some examples of domestic contestations over NRCs and foreign policy, the article points to the re-definition and even the abandonment of policy directions which were not consonant with the imperatives of the domestic political game.

The importance of political selection for bureaucratic effectiveness

AbstractBureaucratic effectiveness has come to the fore in research as necessary for economic growth and development. This paper contributes empirical evidence to understand the building blocks of bureaucracy by gathering rich survey data in a typical institutional environment of the developing world. The data reveal a robust correlation between the selection of local politicians and bureaucratic effectiveness. In districts in Uganda where locally elected politicians have higher survey‐based measures of integrity (or honesty), the bureaucracy is more effective in delivering public heath services. This evidence supports current research, and encourages future research on how the selection of political agents into government is an important determinant of bureaucratic effectiveness.

Feminist futures? Gender and nation in the pro-independence left in Catalonia

This article explores how a feminist approach to politics can resonate within a nation-building project in Catalonia against the backdrop of rising transnational anti-feminist right-wing populism in Europe. Feminism and nationalism have often been presented as oppositional, and nationalist struggles have been considered to further patriarchal regimes. However, nation-building can also be an opportunity to think of feminist alternative futures. The article explores the role of feminism in the political project of the pro-independence Catalan left (Esquerra Independentista), and exposes internal tensions and difficulties in aiming to achieve both independence and feminism in an emancipated Catalonia. Esquerra Independentista adopt two distinctive strategies of feminist politics: the promotion of the indivisibility of social, gender and national struggles (independence, socialism, feminism), and an embodied politics that centralises women’s political agency as a political tool. However, Esquerra Independentista’s proposals for a socialist and feminist future are fragile and limited by internal tensions between the prevalence of masculinist models of doing politics on one hand, and on the other hand, alternative ideas about the strategic importance of class, gender and national oppressions.