Political Articulation Research Articles

“Instagram is like a karela”: transnational digital queer politics and online censorship and surveillance in India

Abstract This article explores transnational queer political flows and negotiations in Indian queer/trans communities on Instagram, situating this in its limits and restrictions as a public sphere that is corporate- and state-governed and subject to conditions of profitability, censorship, regulation, and algorithmic disciplining. Using insights from 23 in-depth interviews with queer/trans women and non-binary Instagram users and community organizers across India, I argue that binaries of Western/Indigenous, global/local, authentic/inauthentic are insufficient to understand Indian queer digital politics. I instead explore the political utility of agentic reclamations and negotiations of queer/trans identity by marginal queer/trans users. At the same time, drawing on participant experiences of content moderation, censorship, and corporate and state surveillance, I examine how the potentials of Instagram as a site to mediate articulations of a radical politics of queer liberation are restricted, thwarted, and reconfigured by platform design and policing.

The Bellwether of Oppression: Anger, Critique, and Resistance

Abstract Feminists have long argued that emotions have a rightful place in politics. Anger, specifically, is often said to play a crucial role in alerting people to oppression and motivating resistance. The task of this paper is to elaborate these claims and to outline a conception of the political value of anger. In doing so, I argue against the view that anger is valuable only if and because it expresses a sound moral judgment. Instead, we should see rage, in the first place, as simply a response to having one's practical aims in the world thwarted—there need be nothing moral or righteous about this feeling for it to have political potential. Second, unlike those who highlight anger's connection with love or claims for equal dignity, I emphasize its tendency towards aggression. With this non-moralized conception of anger in hand, we can see how rage reveals practical problems in a way that can spur on a dialectical process of political articulation and organized action. The resulting standpoint from which one can articulate and resist one's oppression based on one's rage is not inherent in the experience of anger—rather, it needs to be seen as a political achievement in itself.

THE COLLAPSE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY

This scientific article will demonstrate the birth, evolution and crisis of modern democratic regimes. As notorious knowledge, democracy arose from the fall of the monarchical absolutist regime, when human rights appeared accompanied by constitutionalist movements. The evolution was gradual, the result of the social demands that emerged, noting at first the French ideological tripod, namely, freedom, equality and fraternity, reflecting on the social constitutions of social character. It turns out that with the increase of social demands, the state apparatus itself became unable to meet them, despite the existence of social constituent letters enumerating a catalog of human rights. Thus there is the occurrence of the phenomenon of apparent democracy, in which there is a constitutionally foreseen sequence of human rights, together with appropriate legislations, but are not met by the public power, collapsing the system. At the same time, other elements that contribute to the end of democracies are observed, and can point out the partisan political articulations, the search for perpetuation in power, the confidential meetings, the votes for a certain matter and so on that configure what they are what Political scientist Norberto Bobbio defines how the “rules of the game” democratic. Finally, it is appropriate to mention the occurrence of the invisible power of democracy, where not only the subjects hides, but also the content of decisions until the moment they must become public, always having other objectives.

The modern and the Monster: heritage activism in the post-socialist city between performance and performativity

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of urban grassroot movements in the social configuration of contentious heritage and multiple temporalities and political articulations of heritage defense activism. Using the case study method, the paper traces the genealogy of one urban movement in defense of socialist modernist heritage in contemporary Montenegro, shedding light on the process of slow political recognition as opposed to the wide and rampant repertoire of urban contention and socio-cultural appropriation. Focusing on the events following the announcement of the construction of the 12-floor skyscraper (colloquially dubbed “the Monster”) in the immediate proximity of the iconic modernist Hotel Podgorica, the paper theorizes the capacity of urban activism in the contemporary post-socialist city to activate heritage dynamics and leverage urban knowledge as a tool of cultural control. Relying on a multi-method approach including participatory observations, interviews, urban and critical discourse analysis, and the archival research, this paper provides a multi-perspectival analysis of the complex interactions between contentious heritage, grassroot movements and political performativity in the post-socialist city. The results shed light on the evolving role of citizenship in urban development, signaling a paradigm shift towards engaged architecture and emancipatory urban activism as mechanisms for mitigating institutional inefficiencies and political performativity.

Public History and Emancipatory Politics in Transition: From the Anti-Apartheid Struggle to Democracy in South Africa

Abstract The expansion of public history in the context of the ‘decolonial turn’ has generated conversations about the potential productive and mutually constitutive relations between the two. While recognizing that there is no predetermined connection between public history and emancipatory politics, this paper focuses on the strand in public history associated with movements of anti-colonization and decolonialization. In particular contexts, the ideas and practices of public history can present as acts of resistance, of which there are numerous examples. The focus here is on South Africa where the emergence of people’s history (an early instantiation of public history) was closely associated with the anti-apartheid struggle, itself a late instance of decolonization. People’s history proliferated during the 1980s and was both separately and co-produced by progressive scholars at some universities and activists in the internal liberation movements. The paper examines the evolution of the articulation of public history and emancipatory politics, from the anti-apartheid struggle to the democratic era, with particular reference to universities. Whereas the latter were important sites for the expansion of public history until the early 2000s, the adoption by university managements of corporatist models has reinforced hierarchical relations between institutions of higher learning and outside publics, thus narrowing the scope for the practice of a public history that seeks to maintain and grow its connection to emancipatory politics and movements.

Immigrant threat, perception of unsafety, and political articulation of immigration and multiculturalism in European countries

A large body of work has examined the relationship between population composition and risk of victimization. Past research has also suggested that the nature of political rhetoric may have profound impacts on perceived threat, fear of crime, and moral panic. This study constitutes the first attempt to examine the relationships between the negative political articulation of both immigration and multiculturalism by extreme right-wing parties and the perception of unsafety risk in European countries. We employ data from the 2018 European Social Survey (ESS), which we merge with data from the Manifesto Project Dataset, a comparative dataset on political statements. The results reveal that individuals who reside in countries with higher levels of negative political articulation of immigration and multiculturalism express greater perceived unsafety. The results also show that higher levels of perceived immigrant threat amplify the relationship between negative political articulation of immigration and perceived unsafety. Finally, news exposure amplifies the effect of the negative political articulation of immigration on the perception of unsafety when perceived immigrant threat is higher. Our findings underscore the importance of the political context and the potential of political elites to shape public perceptions, including the perception of unsafety.

Apples and Grapes: Thoreau, Latour, and the Land

After decades of studying technoscience as practiced across many disciplines, Bruno Latour turned his attention late in his career almost exclusively to the articulation of critical zones and politics during what he calls the “New Climactic Regime.” Using the same tools he honed throughout his career, the works from Facing Gaia onward try to lay out in clear terms the politics of climate change along with brief forays into possible forms of action. In his last books he presses the specific problem of how to live and attempt to know a specific geographical region without succumbing to isolationism and xenophobia. Many years previous, another irascible and humorous thinker worked similar soils. While Latour’s family has long labored in the Louis Latour vineyards, on the other side of the Atlantic, Henry David Thoreau was seeking wild apples for the long walk home. This essay examines how both thinkers produce a particular vision of a local understanding of place without the oversimplifications of the local/global binary.

Weak progressive politics and resistance without guarantees in the post-pandemic global political economy: a broadly Marxist account

There have been historically high levels of social contestation throughout the contemporary global political economy for over a decade now. Nevertheless, there are no obvious signs of a post-neoliberal global order on the horizon. In seeking to address this puzzle, this article presents a broadly Marxist framework through which to understand the contemporary global political economy, its contestation, corresponding political articulations, and shifting processes of institutionalisation. In adopting this framework, the article argues that the configuration of pressures in today’s global political economy are such that, at best, we can expect and hope for a form of ‘weak’ progressivism, as the systemic obstacles to more substantially emancipatory outcomes are greater than our current global neoliberal (alienated) society is equipped to challenge. This, however, should not necessarily be a cause for (only) pessimism.

Navigating and Exhibiting Ambivalence: Yin Hua Artist Organization and Sino-Indonesian Relations in the 1950s to 1960s

Abstract: This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism and spatial boundedness of the state project’s national identity construction and proposes critical terms of discussion that challenge the limiting nation-centric framework prevalent in the dominant modern art historiography discourse. Drawing on primary archival research, it describes accounts of Lembaga Seniman Yin Hua (Yin Hua Meishu Xiehui, 印華美術協會, Yin Hua Artist Organization), an art organization established in 1955 in Jakarta and analyzes it against the backdrop of the Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relationship during the Cold War era. By engaging with the ambivalent aesthetic and politic of Chinese Indonesian artists, this paper recognizes the active and strategic agency of Chinese Indonesians as both insiders and outsiders in China and Indonesia under the uncertain circumstances of their dual nationality status. It argues that Yin Hua ambivalently navigated between the political patronage of Indonesia and China, performed dual loyalty to Indonesian and Sino-centric art history, and exhibited multiple artistic lineages that disrupted the stabilized territory of postcolonial nation-state geographical and cultural border. Weaving exhibition history, diplomatic history, and critical ethnic studies through a thread of transnational perspective, this paper provides historical narratives that unsettle the roots of racializing logic in the political articulation of nationalism and pushes toward an epistemic shift in rethinking categories of national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship.

Dalits and Discourses of Anti-Caste Movements in Kerala, India

This article locates various historical discourses of anti-caste imaginaries and articulations that are imprinted in the historical past of Kerala society. Unravelling historical and social theoretical trends, it examines broadly an anti-caste imaginary articulating notions of equality and addressing various events, personnel interventions, policies and ideologies made discursive politics in Kerala. As ideologies and its consequent effects upon society are political, the article substantially makes comments and interprets the Dalit-Bahujan world grounded on the lived experiences of Dalits in Kerala. The article brings forth discourses of social movements, production of Dalit icons, critical narratives on untouchability and communist positions about caste. But, a new imagination, academic and aesthetical engagements of Dalit-Bahujans in the form of the production of Dalit art and literature informs new articulation of Dalit politics in Kerala.

Race And Politics In Peruvian And Argentine Porn Under The Transition To Democracy, 1975–1985

This paper examines the articulation of race, class, gender, and politics in erotic magazines during the Argentine and Peruvian destapes in the transition from dictatorial to democratic rule at the turn to the 1980s. We argue that porn, as a genre, was not limited to a niche of readers seeking to use the magazines only for erotic purposes. In Peru, porn was one of the main agents in the opposition to military rule, and it only became a separate, autonomous genre devoid of politics with the coming of democracy. The emergence of magazines focused mostly on eroticism developed as editors attempted to lure readers among recent migrants from the Sierra who lived in the pueblos jóvenes (squatter settlements) in Lima. In this context, the audience demanded pictures of local women to replace foreign white female nudes. In Argentina porn became a crucial aspect of democratic politics, understood as a tool to overcome inhibitions, develop a self-exploration, and undermine traditional mores while fostering democracy. Driven by an impulse to emulate the alleged open-mindedness of Europe and the US, Argentine porn cemented white middle-class identity at a time of economic decline. In this context, Argentine erotic magazines praised sexual experimentation as courageous and gave voice to women, gays, and lesbians. Our approach combines social, political, and cultural history focusing on how the readership shaped magazines and at times achieved significant editorial changes. Through the study of porn we offer new insights regarding the transition to democracy in late Cold War Latin America.

Filipino Youth in Viral and Virulent Times: Unpacking the Predictors of Youth Political Participation in the 2022 Philippine Elections

Conventional political science literature suggests that the economic and political dislocations that accompany disasters, like pandemics, weaken community resources and disrupt social networks, consequently decreasing civic engagement. This paper examines how discontent, demotivation, and fatigue due to the dragging COVID-19 pandemic provided impetus for offline, interpersonal, and online political participation among younger Filipino citizens especially nearing its 2022 presidential elections. Drawing on an exploratory survey of undergraduate students who were constrained to online classes due to pandemic restrictions, we find that pandemic fatigue motivated the youth to explore online platforms as situ of political articulation. The findings also nuance the impact of well-known predictors such as political knowledge, interest, and efficacy on youth civic engagement. In particular, internal political efficacy was found to be strongly related to the three forms of political participation while external efficacy only stimulates online political participation. The study points to the importance of targeting political attitudes in order to shape political interest among the youth and nurture a politically engaged citizenry.

‘When we were here, there were no documents’: the national question at a Kolkata football Derby

ABSTRACT This paper will study a recent protest in Indian football against the Citizenship Amendment Act, a law championed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that threatens to render millions of Indian citizens stateless. Recent scholarship on supporter activism in football tends to focus on the local conditions that drive fan-led actions. Yet, as witnessed at the Kolkata demonstration against the amendment in early 2020, the horizon of politics as imagined by fans remains much wider in its scope. Through this study, we can discern a mode of political articulation by football supporters that combines the local and the national.

Border control technologies: introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction together with the whole special issue on border technologies challenges the limitations of potentially simplistic understandings of contestation, disputes, and political intervention inherent in many accounts of material politics. How do border technologies turn borders into a contested space and how do they come to matter for specific affected communities, especially migrants? How do border technologies manifest hegemonic border-control regimes and thereby marginalise their contestations? Or else, how do they open up alternative versions of the border? Simplified notions of material publics assume that controversial issues may easily turn public. They are also too narrowly framed within the logics of the nation state, de jure citizenship, and specific political articulations of contestation as legitimate within representative democracies. Therefore, these notions disregard opaque, non-transparent forms of government as they are in place through border control regimes, on the one hand, and other less visible forms of contestation deriving from migrant issues and struggles as non-citizens, on the other hand. Migrants concerned with these issues are already marginalised population groups in the context of border technologies. They potentially struggle to make public issues of concern among a wider audience. The introduction together with the special issue expands the analytical repertoire, first, to understand forms of (im)possibilities of contestations related to border technologies and how they are co-shaped by socio-material and epistemic conditions; and second, to include less visible types of material politics, as contesting articulations may appear differently and remain only partially known to wider publics.

Collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in the ASAB cleaning women’s strike in Sweden and the Women’s Day Off in Iceland

ABSTRACT In recent years feminist movements have increasingly employed the form and rhetoric of strikes in framing their protests. The rise of the women’s strike movement has been seen as an indicator of an invigorated wave of feminist activism that focuses, to a greater extent, on structural economic injustices. The aim of this article is to provide a historical aspect to the growing research on strikes as a multifaceted form of protest. The article analyses articulations of collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in two different kinds of ‘women’s strikes’ that took place in the Nordic region during the mid-1970s; the ASAB cleaners’ strikes in Sweden during 1974–1975 and the Icelandic Women’s Day Off that took place on October 24, 1975. The article explores how the relationship between gender and class was conceptualized by participants, organizers, and bystanders. We employ these cases to study how solidarity and sisterhood across differences among women might have appeared in practice while at the same time reflecting internal tensions and varying interests. Moreover, the article reflects on the specific form of the strikes and the potential impact their respective form might have had on the political articulations that came out of them.

Reputation as Articulation: Alliance Building of Career Politicians in the Jim Crow South

Studies of political articulation focus overwhelmingly on the role of parties in constructing political identities and group interests, relying on inter-party competition, given a sharp partisan divide. However, where party identification is less salient, local politicians forge alliances from disparate constituencies, cultivating varying political reputations that personify the concerns of distinct groups. By examining Alabama politics in the 1920s, focusing on the dramatically different relations with the Ku Klux Klan and business elites of Alabama’s three senators, we address how politicians generate supportive alliances in the absence of party competition. To this end, we extend articulation theories by examining how political actors—and not only their parties—cultivate support by presenting the concerns of local publics through their electoral persona. Drawing on archival material, we explore how Senators Oscar Underwood, J. Thomas Heflin, and Hugo Black came to represent key interest groups, forging distinct paths to electoral success. An exclusive focus on parties overlooks politicians’ reputation-building as a mechanism of political articulation.

Anti-gender politics in Finland and Romania

This study examines the articulation of anti-gender politics in the parliamentary debates centred on two citizens’ initiatives in Finland and Romania. Although different in their endeavours (in Finland, supporting equal marriage rights; in Romania, attempting to legislate pre-emptively against them), these citizens’ initiatives resulted in significant defeats for the wider anti-gender campaigns in these countries. Examining closely the parliamentary debates ensuing these proposals, we evidence how anti-gender politics developed in ways specific to each examined polity and served as a key vehicle for different manners of retrogressive mobilisation, which bypassed left–right ideological cleavages and party loyalty. We scrutinise critically the discursive scenarios that coalesce in anti-gender politics in the two countries, and we map out both the commonalities and differences between the antithetic narrative scenarios, which hinge on the position of the child within a heteronormative nuclear family and the depiction of marriage equality as a harbinger of an impending societal collapse.

The horizontal governance of environmental upgrading: Lessons from the Prosecco and Valpolicella wine value chains in Italy

Much of the literature on environmental sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) focuses on how ‘lead firms’ (usually global buyers or retailers) can improve the environmental conditions of production among their various layers of suppliers. This approach focuses on the vertical governance dynamics of environmental upgrading along with GVCs. In our contribution, we emphasize the role of horizontal governance as a driver that underpins environmental upgrading processes. These horizontal elements include institutional support, pressure from civil society groups and political dynamics at the local level – which have been relatively overlooked in this literature so far. We examine environmental upgrading in Italian wine value chains, focusing on the fast-growing but environmentally-contested Prosecco and Valpolicella districts. Our analysis suggests that firms within the same industry may follow different processes of environmental upgrading – through certification, going ‘back to tradition’, technological innovation and/or as an articulation of local politics – also depending on their size. We conclude that horizontal governance is playing a more important role than previously thought in shaping environmental upgrading and provide some suggestions for future research in this realm.

L’usage du référent chrétien dans le débat public contemporain en France: Essai de typologie

The use of the Christian referent in contemporary public debate in France raises the question of the imaginary to which societies have recourse in order to construct their memory and establish their foundation. The contents of these representations and mental configurations give meaning to collective coexistence and can evolve over time, under the effect of changes in social structures, mobilization strategies carried by elites, and the demands of public opinion. The situation in contemporary France illustrates these changes. Until the 1980s, the “civil religion” produced by the governmental elites in such a way as to consolidate the political bond did not match the “common religion” lived by the populations: Christianity, at least in its Catholic form, remained outside the official mode of representation of society. The situation has changed in recent decades. By a kind of paradox, while the Church sees its social audience regressing, Christianity becomes again central in the image that France intends to give of itself. In this article, we would like to describe, in a typological way, the forms of this newfound alliance, based on public discourse over the last forty years. An immediate examination of contemporary elaborations leads us to identify three essential figures - culturalist, foundationalist, deliberative - of the articulation of politics and religion, distinct from the rationalist paradigm of the Third Republic. The developments in these pages will attempt to test this pluralist hypothesis.

Political Articulation: The Intellectuality of Ahmad Mustofa Bisri in Struggling for the Contest of Truth

This study examined intellectual politics, which seek to reveal the significance of the political acts of an intellectual. These actions are often surprising, but in the end, they provide references for the general public. The significant political actions here meant to provide a point of reference, when people are trapped in controversies and instrumentalist reasoning. There are hard to understand politics, but the results are clear: the general public gets references to judge and determine judgment. Politics takes place at the level of meaning, more than just a struggle of interests. It is a manifest in the articulation of ideas or values, not in the expertise in organizing, structuring authority, or struggling for positions. The results of this study found that the way out of rational-instrumental reasoning that dominates (mainstream) is communicative-rationality reasoning through communicative acts in public spaces. This intellectual study is expected to have an important contribution in developing a sub-study: articulatory politics.