Arena Of Contestation Research Articles

Wujud Patrimonialisme di Taman Ismail Marzuki, 1968-1998

This article discusses the forms of patrimonialism that occurred during the New Order era with a case study of Taman Ismail Marzuki. The state's involvement in hegemony in the field of culture transforms into Javanese power politics present in the post-colonial era so that the state fully controls the activities of artists in one space. As a public space, Taman Ismail Marzuki cannot be separated from political intervention, which has made it an arena for contestation between artists and the state. The New Order's patrimonial practice at Taman Ismail Marzuki lasted from 1968 to 1998, allowing the state to control artists for legitimisation purposes. The questions raised in this article include: why did the state build Taman Ismail Marzuki? How did the state utilise Taman Ismail Marzuki as its political project? Who are the actors in Taman Ismail Marzuki? This article uses the historical method which includes heuristics, source criticism, interpretation and historiography. The research uses the concept of patrimonialism and departs from the concept, there are results and findings that the author describes including: (1) Patrimonialism in the Culture, (2) Negotiation Space of Politics and Culture, (3) The State Takes the Role of Culture and (4) Criticising New Order Politics.

A stakeholder perspective on contested urban heritage and heritage tourism

While there is consensus among researchers that stakeholder participation is critical for heritage development, conflicts between stakeholders can exist and create an arena of contestation. Limited studies have addressed the issue of contested heritage and conflict mitigation in heritage tourism. Examining contested urban heritage in Dalian, China, this study investigates stakeholder conflict using means-end-chain analysis to reveal conflicting perspectives and visions. Furthermore, it uses tourisation theory to assess the tourism potential of each identified development scenario. Findings reveal how a focus on functional adaptation can help to achieve compromise between “dismantler” and “preservationist” polarities to gain agreement between stakeholders. This study enhances the understanding of stakeholder conflict related to contested heritage and contributes to stakeholder theory by addressing conflict mitigation and consensus building. By highlighting the heterogeneity within traditionally defined stakeholder groups, the study suggests using attitudinal groups as a strategy for stakeholder categorization and identification of common ground. It further demonstrates how a value-based approach can help to understand the shaping of stakeholders’ views and foster consensus, laying the foundation for collaborative planning in urban heritage tourism.

“Gays in Your Living Room”: LGBTQ+ Television, Homophobia, and the Birth of Channel 4 in 1980s Britain

ABSTRACT This article examines the conflicting attitudes toward homosexuality and public-service broadcasting among British program-makers, pressure groups, newspapers, politicians, and viewers in the 1980s through the prism of Channel 4’s One in Five (1983), billed as “the first programme ever to begin to show what it means to be positively gay.” It pairs a close reading of the broadcast with wide-ranging research in the archives of broadcasters, LGBTQ+ organizations, Parliament, and the press to show why minority programming formed a major arena of contestation over the representation and rights of lesbian and gay people in late twentieth-century Britain. Straight opposition to One in Five captured the strength and characteristics of homophobia in the 1980s, while the program’s divisive effect on queer audiences illuminated divisions within the LGBTQ+ community at the cusp of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The program was dogged by difficulties in creating a cohesive queer identity capable of accommodating differences in gender and ethnicity, region and nation, lifestyle, class, sexual practices, and political orientation. The inception, production, and reception of One in Five simultaneously highlight the particularities of sexual politics in Thatcherite Britain and ongoing dilemmas about the processes and merits of achieving inclusion, diversity, and equality for marginalized groups.

Contesting the Securitization of Migration: NGOs, IGOs, and the Security Backlash

Abstract Studies of migration-related security concerns have focused on the emergence of these concerns through securitization or their potential dissolution through desecuritization. This paper challenges the conventional view of these processes—securitization and desecuritization—as oppositional and mutually exclusive. Instead, it argues that they are imbricated in complex ways in an arena of contestation where actors vie for legitimacy and justify their claims through ongoing actions and reactions. Focusing on the Global South case of securitized migration in the Dominican Republic, this paper conceptualizes desecuritization not as a discrete outcome measured by success or failure, but as a dynamic process evolving through interactions with securitization. By examining the role of non-state actors in contesting securitized policies, the paper reveals that such contestation can paradoxically intensify securitization through a “security backlash” that delegitimizes these actors and discredits their rights-based claims. This dynamic underscores the “resilience” of securitization amidst persistent contestation. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates desecuritization as iterative contestation rather than static outcomes, emphasizing the agency of non-state actors in shaping security narratives and practices while acknowledging their limitations against powerful state actors. These insights from a study of South–South migration extend the application of the securitization framework beyond convenient Western contexts and challenge perceived geographic boundaries.

“A Nonexistent Incapacity”

In the 1920s and 1930s, the French colonial phosphate mining company in Gafsa, Tunisia, used X-ray images to decide which of its workers’ injuries were fake and which were real. Through an analysis of X-ray photography in Gafsa, this article argues that a capacious history of capitalism—one connecting wage labor exploitation with other human and nonhuman work—requires methods that do not prioritize what is visible. Rather than asking what X-ray images show diagnostically, this article charts how the creation of visibility and invisibility was a political act, a tactic of capital accumulation, and an arena of contestation. Company administrators and doctors used X-rays to draw biomedical and temporal boundaries around chronic injuries, making them “nonexistent”—and thus noncompensable—despite workers’ claims. This colonial-racial project both reified and remade the company's semantic categories for defining what an injury was. The company mobilized the material and epistemological properties of X-ray light on a photographic negative to erase chronic injury within dark or blurred spaces. The resulting category, a “nonexistent incapacity,” acknowledged both the presence of injury and its disappearance, constructing visibility and invisibility within capitalist relations of production and exploitation. Read this way, Gafsa's X-ray images ultimately outline a political economy of (in)visibility.

Perilaku Birokrasi Tenaga Non ASN BAWASLU dalam Seleksi Penyelenggara Pemilihan Umum di Provinsi Gorontalo

This study aims to describe the dynamics of involvement and bureaucratic behavior of non-ASN Bawaslu personnel in the selection of members of the general election organizing commissioners in Gorontalo Province. This study uses a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data collection uses observation, interview and documentation techniques. Data analysis is carried out interactively through data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions. The results of the study show that the dynamics of involvement of non-ASN Bawaslu personnel in the selection of general election organizers is influenced by capacity, both professionalism and independence, affiliation with community organizations, and support in the form of political party recommendations. The behavior of the non-ASN Bawaslu bureaucracy in recruiting candidates for general election organizer commissioners can be assessed from the aspects of legitimacy, rational encouragement, attractiveness which is a source of inspiration, and consultation. Individual characteristics, including abilities, needs, experience, intelligence and talents possessed by non-ASN Bawaslu staff, dominate bureaucratic behavior in the arena of contestation for recruitment of general election organizers.

Representation of the Identity of the Indonesian Ulama Council in Fatwa Regarding Religious Blasphemy in the Case of Basuki Tjahaja Cahaya Purnama (Ahok)

MUI's fatwa in the case of blasphemy and insulting clerics by Ahok is a complex event. It not only signifies the rise of political Islam in the arena of contestation but also symbolizes the presence of identity representation. MUI through its fatwa seems to confirm the presence of sectarian identity based on religion. This refers to Johnson's concept that the media text leads to something behind it. By analyzing the fatwa, it becomes clear that through its text, MUI not only shows itself as an affirmation of Islamic identity as the dominant but also as a binary differentiator in the cultural representation of Indonesian society in various other dimensions. By using a text analysis approach and also a literature study, the author concluded that MUI has opened political identity in the electoral arena. The issuance of MUI fatwa text in Ahok's case has opened a new level of cultural representation dynamics, through religious identity that goes hand in hand with electoral contestation.

Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases

Abstract This collectively authored article argues for a regional turn in the historical study of transnational activism. By considering not only pan-regional movements but also examples of borderland contexts, transregional connections and diasporic understandings of ‘region’, our discussion identifies fresh possibilities for investigating the evolution and functioning of transnational activism. Based on a Royal Historical Society-funded workshop held at and supported by Northumbria University, the article brings together insights from diverse locations and arenas of contestation. The first part considers literatures on three macro-regional settings – South Asia, Western Europe and Latin America – to illustrate the importance of distinctive regional contexts and constructs in shaping transnational activism and its goals. The second part turns to case studies of transnational activism in and beyond Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean and East Asia. In doing so, it explores very different notions of the regional to identify how transnational activism has both shaped and been shaped by these ideas. Taken together, the two parts highlight the role of regional identities and projects in challenging inequalities and external domination. Our analysis and examples indicate the possibilities of a regionally rooted approach for writing histories of transnational activism.

Political Control and Bureaucratic Resistance: The Case of Environmental Agencies in Brazil

ABSTRACTWhy does the ability of political leaders to control the bureaucracy vary? With strong meritocratic recruitment and tenure protections, Brazil appears an ideal case for successful bureaucratic resistance against political control. However, our analysis reveals how Bolsonaro overcame initial resistance by recalibrating strategies, ultimately dominating many key sectors of the bureaucracy. Drawing on over 100 interviews with public officials, we find that strategies of political control and bureaucratic resistance unfold in a dynamic, yet often predictable, pattern based on leaders' previous experiences and their ability to learn, adjust, and tighten their grip on the instruments of the state. The Bolsonaro administration transformed the regulatory framework and targeted individual state employees, reducing arenas of contestation and inducing public sector workers to remain silent, implementing the president’s policy preferences. We examine these control strategies in environmental agencies, their replication, and potential long-term consequences.

Popular Cultural Resistance of Makassar Students

Popular culture is often interpreted as the practice of pacifism over the instant and commercial superiority of mass culture. Students, as community members, cannot be separated from social reality, which intersects with popular culture on a daily basis. Hegemonic popular culture can become an arena for contesting students' reinterpretation practices to express their resistance to the values that are behind the presence of a cultural trend. The purpose of this study is to reveal first, students' popular cultural practices in relation to changes in orientation as a scientifically oriented, objective, and critical learning agent, and second, how students make resistance efforts from within popular culture to re-create meaning practices in order to avoid domination. cultural hegemony in capitalism. This research uses a descriptive-qualitative approach. Data analysis was carried out through three stages: data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of the study found two main things. First, popular culture is a social construction of mass media, which is an important part of the birth of mass culture. Second, popular culture is an arena for contestation of the practice of redefining so that it can change the values of cultural capitalism into values of resistance.

In the arena: contesting disaster creation in cities.

Space is a feature of all disasters, and it is through decisions on how space is developed, used, and reproduced that disasters manifest themselves. Critical urban theory sees urban space-cities-as an arena of contestation expressed through the relationship between people, power, and the built environment. Cities allow for an unpacking of this process of contestation through the interpretation of various temporal, spatial, social, and physical elements that together create complex issues and 'wicked problems'. In these urban spaces in all their complexity, disasters reveal both the worst injustices and inequalities present in a society. By drawing on three well-known cases-Hurricane Katrina in 2010; the Haiti earthquake in 2010; and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011-this paper not only explores the opportunities that critical urban theory presents for gaining a deeper understanding of disaster risk creation, but also it encourages disaster scholars to engage with it.

Pro-poor change in the aftermath of disasters – Exploring possibilities at the intersection of disaster politics and land rights issues in Central Philippines

This article demonstrates how natural disasters can rearrange arenas of contestation over land use, ownership and titling. It analyses how state agents, organized civil society, communities and powerful business groups in three cases in rural Philippines dealt with the challenges and opportunities for agrarian reform after being hit by typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Understanding this connection between agrarian reform and disasters will become increasingly important to address the vulnerabilities of the marginalized in the context of climate change and related rise in disasters. An actor-oriented perspective and a case study method was used to unravel how specific communities engage with processes of agrarian reform after a disaster and how a crisis can change dynamics between actors from above and below in agrarian reform processes. This is needed since the people’s perspective on these processes is often missing and knowledge on the everyday experiences of social change is limited. The cases show that disasters are a window of opportunity to reverse or accelerate complicated agrarian reform processes: by restructuring dynamics between actors from below and above in existing, sometimes stagnated agrarian reform processes, by revealing political dynamics that were invisible before or by creating new possibilities to mobilize actors from above and below to claim access to land.

How to recognise the inevitable: Latvian media narratives on climate change

Political elites over the world face considerable challenges in getting societies into climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. The process is even more complicated by complex media ecologies, into which official strategic narratives are modified and contested. This study explores the media narratives on climate change and their alignment with the official political narrative in a country located on the European Union's eastern border – Latvia, analysing the representation of climate change by the four most popular digital Latvian news platforms in Latvian and Russian languages. Observing that recognition and international cooperation narratives dominate, this study concludes that media only partially project the official political narrative, which focuses on opportunities from climate change. By considering multiple perspectives of scientists, politicians, society and businesses, the media provide an arena of contestation. At the same time, the media narratives lack a domesticated alternative on climate change that is fundamental for an action-encouraging discursive environment. As a result, the image of climate change as a geographically distant, internationally addressed, negotiated and contested phenomenon persists, yet the role of Latvian actors remains unspecified. Illuminating the climate change strategic narrative projection in Latvia, this study complements the research on climate change media coverage in Central and Eastern Europe and provides insights into the communication challenges the region faces.

Practice of the MUI Authority in Maintaining Religious Harmony in Indonesia

The scope of major issues regarding the harmony of religious life, namely the implementation of laws and regulations, especially Law No. 32 of 2004 concerning government difficulties in its implementation, the development of the religious sector including the five government affairs which are still in the hands of the government, this research tries to find out the practice of authority carried out by religious institutions, especially Islamic teachings as the majority religion in Indonesia, are seen as a sociological phenomenon. This research uses the method of a literature study, collecting library data and references starting from the internet, reading, taking notes, processing research. The collected data are scientific publications filtered by references to books, journal articles. identifying the results of the research referring to the problem "The Practice of MUI Authorities in Maintaining Religious Harmony in Indonesia", the writer observes studying phenomena that occur in society and then analyzes the phenomena from previous research. Issues of authority, especially religious authority, often become an arena of contestation by various groups. religious. By holding on to authority, it is not uncommon for authoritarian actions to be exhibited by judging other groups who are considered to have deviated from the established understanding of religion. It's not just a matter of judgment of "heretical sects", automatically it is also often used to control adherents of other religions. The existence of various fatwa institutions is actually proof of the pluralism of understanding and interpretation of Islam in Indonesia. Among the fatwa institutions, their opinions cannot be mutually denied or eliminated. The diversity of opinions of fatwa institutions is nothing more than a diversity of legal opinions that give space to the public to choose.

(Re)making hydrosocial territories: Materializing and contesting imaginaries and subjectivities through hydraulic infrastructure

Infrastructures and their roles and connections to and in territories and territorialization processes have increasingly become objects of study in political geography scholarship. In this contribution, we build on these emerging insights and advance them by further conceptually disentangling the agential role of infrastructure. We bring together the notions of territory, governmentality, imaginaries and subjectivities, to clarify how exactly hydraulic infrastructure acts to transform relations between space, people and materiality. We start by introducing territorialization as a process of ‘ordering things’ in a certain space and time through different techniques of government. We then show how, at the base of such territorialization processes, are imaginaries that contain normative ideas about how space and socio-territorial relations should be ordered. Imaginaries are consequently materialized through hydraulic infrastructure through the inscription of morals, values and norms in infrastructure design, construction and operation. This set of materialities and relations embedded in infrastructure brings changes to the existing relations between space, water and people. In particular, we highlight the repercussions of infrastructure for how people understand and relate to each other, the environment, water, technology and space: in other words, how subjectivities change as an effect of hydraulic infrastructure constitution. Last, we show how infrastructure and the related hydrosocial territories that develop around it are a dynamic arena of contestation and transformation. We argue that socio-material fractures, emerging counter-imaginaries and the disruptive capacities of subjectivities constantly challenge the ‘fixes’ that infrastructures aim to inscribe in hydrosocial territories. Throughout the paper, we use empirical examples from recent research on hydraulic infrastructure and territorial transformations to ground the conceptual ideas.

Arenas of Contestation: A Senian Social Justice Perspective on the Nature of Materiality in Impact Measurement

Although the importance of measuring and reporting the social and environmental impact of organisational action is increasingly well recognised by both organisations and society at large, existing approaches to impact measurement are still far from being universally accepted. In this context, the stakeholder dynamics within the nascent field of impact investing demonstrate the complexity of resolving potentially differing perspectives on key impact measurement issues such as materiality. This paper argues, from an organisational perspective, that such arenas of contestation can be conceptualised in terms of social justice. Specifically, we draw upon Sen’s notions of ‘arrangement and realisation’ to explore the dynamics of contestation across a range of stakeholders concerning materiality judgements to suggest that such ‘arrangements’ may lead to suboptimal impact outcomes as ‘realisations.’ Our analysis of the nature of materiality contestations in impact measurement reveals the conflicts, tensions and paradoxes evident in this field of action. Empirically, we examine data drawn from 19 cases and 33 interviews. The analysis suggests three arenas of contestation around the materiality of impact measurement: the power dynamics between economically powerful investors and objectified investees; the conflicts between materiality norms and standards; and the interactions between all stakeholders with differing motivations towards radical or incremental materiality. Building upon this analysis, we then discuss how arenas of contested materiality may be mediated by drawing upon Sen’s notions of transcending the individual interests of the invested parties for the greater good via processes of contextualisation and case-specificity.

Localisation requires trust: an interface perspective on the Rohingya response in Bangladesh.

Local actors are promoted as important agents in the humanitarian sector's latest reform efforts. Opinions on the exact meaning and the best means of implementing localisation differ, however. Applying an interface perspective, this paper analyses how the Rohingya response in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, became an arena of contestation, competition, and sometimes convergence among different actors in relation to localisation. It shows how misconceptions and divergent understandings of localisation and the best methods of achieving it were prevalent and hampered the joint endeavours of international and local humanitarian bodies. Although both sides sought common ground, conflicting views, interests, and perceptions of 'self' and 'other' stood in the way. A lack of trust between international and local organisations intensified divisions. The paper argues, therefore, that the humanitarian sector needs to engage in trust-building between the various entities involved in humanitarian response if localisation is to be realised, including addressing underlying structural and systemic issues of (neo)colonialism, racism, and classism.

Digitizing Religion: Millenial Generation Da’wah Patterns on Social Media

The integration of technology has resulted in implementing of the da'wah model growing rapidly and dynamically. The research was conducted by identifying how religion is understood and applied by the millennial generation and how da'wah can be accepted and understood in the millennial era. This study uses descriptive qualitative, and the arrangement uses literature by reviewing, collecting data through a library approach, and collecting information from various digital sources. The research results show that da'wah must be able to position itself in the digital space as an arena of contestation to win the hearts of the people in building a new civilization in the world of da'wah. In addition, many applications and interesting da'wah content have been developed in the era of media digitization. Thus, it impacts efforts to package da'wah messages and disseminate da'wah messages regarding religious language in the digital space. One of them is linking text, narration, images, symbols, and graphics.

Micro-domination

This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro-domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican strategy of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domination, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases of micro-domination.

Bahrain's transnational Arab Spring: repression, oil and human rights activism

Abstract Studies of the Middle East following the Arab Spring have concluded that ‘repression works’, especially in the oil- and gas-rich countries of the Gulf. Drawing on primary materials collected during fieldwork trips to Bahrain, the United States and Britain, this article nuances the ‘repression effect’ by tracing the emergence of a transnational Bahraini opposition, mapping the relationships and joint activities between domestic and exiled Bahraini groups, international NGOs and western policy-makers. It finds that even in the context of domestic repression and continuing ideological divides within Bahrain's opposition, transnational networks have not only sustained opposition organizations, but also maintained access to foreign policy-makers, producing repeated criticisms of the Bahraini regime and legal challenges to ruling elites who visit western states. The successes of this advocacy are modest: while it has not drastically reshaped the domestic state–society relationship, it has created significant costs for the Bahraini regime and damaged Bahrain's international brand. As a result, state and opposition networks now compete for influence over western policy-makers: international ‘arenas of advocacy’—such as the UK parliament, US Congress, UNHRC and European Parliament—have now become ‘arenas of contestation’, as state and opposition narratives of Bahraini politics, filtered through western policy-makers, play out during debates over foreign policy towards Bahrain. The article positions transnational activism as a direct outcome of the ‘repression effect’, highlighting ongoing contests for influence between state and society occurring in international and transnational spaces, even as the domestic scope for opposition mobilization remains highly restricted.