Political Articulation Research Articles

National manhood: capitalist citizenship and the imagined fraternity of white men

National Manhood explores the relationship between gender, race, and nation by tracing developing ideals of citizenship in the United States from the Revolutionary War through the 1850s. Through an extensive reading of literary and historical documents, Dana D. Nelson analyzes the social and political articulation of a civic identity centered around the white male and points to a cultural moment in which the theoretical consolidation of white manhood worked to ground, and perhaps even found, the nation. Using political, scientific, medical, personal, and literary texts ranging from the Federalist papers to the ethnographic work associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the medical lectures of early gynecologists, Nelson explores the referential power of white manhood, how and under what conditions it came to stand for the nation, and how it came to be a fraternal articulation of a representative and civic identity in the United States.In examining early exemplary models of national manhood and by tracing its cultural generalization, National Manhood reveals not only how an impossible ideal has helped to form racist and sexist practices, but also how this ideal has simultaneously privileged and oppressed white men, who, in measuring themselves against it, are able to disavow their part in those oppressions. Historically broad and theoretically informed, National Manhood reaches across disciplines to engage those studying early national culture, race and gender issues, and American history, literature, and culture.

Dialectics of localization: The political articulation of land rites and land rights in the interior of eastern Fiji (1874‐c.1990)

Dialectics of localization: The political articulation of land rites and land rights in the interior of eastern Fiji (1874‐c.1990)

A day at the zoo: political communication, pigs and popular culture

Current worries about a supposedly increasing popularization of political campaign methods and styles are rooted in the historical oppositions between popular culture and modernism. The folkloric world of popular culture, ruled by coincidence and marked by suspicion and sensation, seems to be thoroughly at odds with the modernist tradition of politics which is distinguished by a belief in rationality, progress and the capacity of people to take control over their own lives. Nevertheless, there are many historical articulations of popular culture and politics which have by definition been contested and controversial. Nowadays, a general fear is that politics is becoming completely popularized, implying among other things an appearance of politicians on popular `platforms', a changed rhetorical style and an adaptation and acknowledgement of popular political themes. In such `moral panics', politicians, academics and journalists alike, firmly blame (commercial) television for such a `refeudalization' of political life and for the increasing numbers of political cynics among citizens. But popular political communication should instead be perceived as a symptom of a crisis in the relation between citizens and their representatives, and as an attempt to restore that relation. Whereas the different social traditions of popular culture and politics will prevent the complete popularization of politics, in the postmodern condition there is a need for a new generation of politicians who are able to reconcile the different requirements of popular culture and representative politics, and who may thus inspire a much needed revived sense of connectedness between citizens and their representatives.

The transformation of cleavage politics: the 1997 stein rokkan lecture

Abstract. In this lecture I discuss the development of the social divisions in Western Europe and their translation into politics. I successively take up the three aspects embraced by the notion of ‘cleavages’— their structural base, the political values of the groups involved, and their political articulation. My main argument is that the decline of traditional cleavages does not necessarily signify the end of structuration of politics by social divisions. There is ample empirical evidence for the existence of a new social division between two segments of the new middle class, which has important consequences for politics. This new social division is shown to be closely linked to the new ‘value cleavage’ although it is not able to fully account for the enormous political implications which contrasting value–orientations have today. Finally, I suggest that the political articulation of both the transformed class structure and the new configuration of values is strongly shaped by the political legacy of traditional cleavages.

“Finally, I Have My Mother Back”

In this article, the meaning of popular culture for political communication is analyzed—in theoretical and empirical terms—by examining coverage of Dutch female and male politicians in gossip magazines over a period of twenty years. It is argued that the unlikely articulation of politics with popular culture is achieved through a personalization of politics in which the moral behavior and attitudes of politicians are central. Virtue, however, is constructed differently for women and men, which is especially evident in the coverage of family lives. For male politicians, family lives present an opportunity to show their reliability and integrity. The coverage of the families of female politicians, however, indicates women's split responsibilities between public and private duties. In general, the schematic and dichotomous moral schemes of popular culture tend to construct politicians as moral icons, which prevents an informed evaluation of how their private lives affect their public performance.

Issues of difference and citizenship for ‘new identities’: A theoretical view

Social theories that approach the presence of ‘new identities ‘ in an already given social and political space encounter problems in defining both identities and space, and their relationship. This paper looks into the works of sociologist Bryan Turner, political theorist Chantal Mouffe and philosopher Iris Young to finally settle into the theories of space and place of Harvey, Massey and others as an alternative way to articulate the problem of marginal identities in Europe. I argue that, if we think of any given identity as multiple and dynamic (as opposed to being fixed and originary), and also the identity of any given place as multiple, and as a process, then it is logical and meaningful to re‐articulate subject identities and place identities as in a relationship. The nature of this relationship is a complex web of political, social, economic and cultural articulations. Therefore, any discourse on citizenship should be grounded within this frame of analysis and not on an ethical principle of nation state and on a‐historical, originary constructions of particularistic or universal identities.

The making of the ‘Basque’ political institutions: the federal association of the representative assemblies during the Liberal Revolution (1793–1833), part II

SUMMARY In this article Joseba Agirreazkuenaga continues his previous contributions on the development of Basque political institutions. Having followed developments to the end of the Ancien Regime, he analyzes here the process of political and bureaucratic consolidation during a time of political, ideological and military confrontations between supporters of the liberal revolution and those of the counter-revolution, in defence of the old order. This article concludes at the beginning of the long civil war, known as the first Carlist War, in which the Basque Country became one of the focal points of political debate and articulation of the new Spanish liberal state.

The Renaissance of English Regionalism in the 1990s

The article initially considers what might appear to be the singularly unpropitious conditions for the success of regional government in England. But the argument retreats from a simplistic restatement of English exceptionalism and charts the complex history of the politics of regionalism. Moreover, analysts often import a teleological and homogeneous view of the regionalisation process when France, Spain and Italy show an unpredictable and non-uniform pattern. Also recent developments - Europeanisation, regional administration and the emergence of regional governance - have bolstered both the administrative arrangements at the regional level and regional forms of political articulation. The piece concludes with some reflections on the likely implementation problems of introducing regional government.

Is the Minor Essential?: Contemporary Portuguese Fiction and Questions of Identity

Is the Minor Essential?: Contemporary Portuguese Fiction and Questions of Identity Helena Kaufman (bio) Portugal and the Minor Identity To discuss the concept of “minor” might seem relatively straightforward. It implies defining what is “minor” and then proceeding to determine the context in which it is to be used: literary, linguistic, political, and so on. However, as one soon discovers, to discuss the concept of “minor” in literature, for example, will have to incorporate the linguistic, social, and political articulations of it. Moreover, the definition itself is bound to raise some difficulties, as well. One could choose to found it on the most commonly used, extra-contextual meaning of the word—“minor” is smaller, narrower, marginal, lesser in importance or stature. However, such a use of the word would ignore some transformative contributions, at least in the realm of literary criticism, by philosophers and theorists from, for example, Heidegger to Deleuze and Guattari, for whom “minor” was connoted as hidden and de-centered and yet essential in its significance. To best define “minor” would, therefore, imply exposing and discussing the contradictions and paradoxes lying at the heart of it. Portugal seems to be the case in point as it struggles to simultaneously describe and question its own condition of minority. Two positions are important when approaching Portugal’s cultural and literary status in terms of being considered “minor.” The first stems from the standard perception of “minor” and describes the specific circumstances of the exclusion of Portuguese literature from the political, cultural, and literary center or canon. The second position pries deeper into the structure of the “minor” itself, examining the intrinsic nature of literature to resist canonization, or, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, its “revolutionary” potential. Contemporary Portugal seems to be a perfect example of a minor European nation. Its geo-political positioning puts Portugal literally on the margins of Europe: it is a small country on the Westernmost shore of Europe with the population of approximately ten million. [End Page 167] Although Portugal has been a member of the European Union since 1986, its economy dependent on agriculture cannot compete with that of heavily developed, industrialized Central and Western European countries. But here the simple identification of Portugal with the minor gets complicated. The first indication of ambiguity eroding Portugal’s minor status is the question of the Portuguese language. Judging by several indicative statistics, Portuguese is, in fact, treated as a minor language. There are few translations from Portuguese fiction or professional literature available in English compared, for example, with those in Spanish or Russian, not to mention German or French. Teaching of Portuguese at American universities has always been relegated to the secondary status of the so-called “less taught languages.” Portuguese constitutes a section in Spanish or Modern languages departments with the exception of Brown University where there actually exists Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. In general, if Portuguese continues to be taught in the U.S., it is, for better or for worse, chiefly due to the interest in Brazil and not in Portugal. However, because Portugal was once a colonial power present on four continents, it should be readily recognized as a major language, given the number of people who speak Portuguese in the world today (150 million). Portuguese-speaking nations have long been involved in an effort to gain a major status for their language. In 1994 they signed an orthographic agreement to unify spelling differences among national variations in the use of Portuguese (Continental, Brazilian, and African). Whether the agreement will be honored by the respective parties still remains to be seen but it shows that Portugal and its former colonies are realistic about the ways in which the Portuguese language and through it, the cultures and literatures of the countries which speak it, have a chance to move to the center stage, out of a minor and into a major status. Regarding the case of Portuguese literature alone, this ambiguity was recently reconfirmed to some extent by Harold Bloom’s book, The Western Canon (1994). In it Bloom includes a chapter on the twentieth-century Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, the only representative of the Portuguese-language literature in...

Formations, Locations and Reproductions of Fascist Fantasies

The conjunction of fascism and fantasy inevitably recalls Klaus Theweleit's extensive two volume study of Freikorps' Male Fantasies (1987). Now a decade later, four books-representing some of most important, innovative scholarly work on fascism-shift our focus to literal and figurative matrices of fascist fantasies-women. The naturalization of motherhood; fantasy of harnessing as literal reproductive organs of fascist collectivity; representation of sexualized violation, and destruction of signifiers of feminine to demarcate sexual and economic autarky: given these staples of fascist ideological fantasies, women's roles in, accommodations to, and revisions of gendering of power in Italian fascism and National Socialism--one of main foci of these studies-make a particularly compelling topic for analysis. It is safe to say, without leveling out specificities of particular historical and political articulations of fascism, as ideology and/or regime, that fascist ideology recognized and celebrated insofar as they remained in domestic, or private, sphere as mothers and wives, while it also called upon them to participate politically. And yet, as each author here asks, what do we know about affiliated with, or supportive of, fascism, yet excluded by narrow gender prescriptions of such an ideological filter: unmarried; childless; those who occupied a public role; those whose defense of women's rights made them intolerant of misogyny of reproductive scripts and disdainful of paucity of roles accorded to them in fascist ideology? How do negotiate, or rewrite, what Barbara Spackman refers to as the fascist topography of sex and gender-the boundaries of public and private space-when, as she observes in discursive regime of Italian fascism, stepping out into public sphere 'masculinizes' and 'sterilizes' women, and production and reproduction are strictly, and asymmetrically, linked for men and women (35). Negotiating and renegotiating public and private space constitutes not only objective of fascist ideology; it is also

Politik in Demokratien ohne demokratischen Souverän

In the last years the consolidation of the central American democracies did not succeed because the usual symbolic forms of political behaviour in consolidated democracies did not correspond to the traditional participatory modes of political articulations in Central America. Without the institutional recognition of these forms of participation representation of the interests of the poor majorities remain excluded from the sphere of political decision.

The Madonna connection: representational politics, subcultural identities, and cultural theory

Introduction - connections/intersections, Cathy Schwichtenberg. Part 1 Out of bounds - reading race and Madonna's audiences: a sacred monster in her prime - audience construction of Madonna as low-other, Laurie Schulze et al Madonna T/races - music videos through the prism of colour, Thomas K. Nakayama and Lisa N. Penaloza images of race and religion in Madonna's video Like a Prayer - prayer and praise, Ronald B. Scott. Part 2 The sapphic insurgent - Madonna and gay culture: embodying subaltern memory - kinesthesia and the problematics of race and gender, Cindy Patton justify our love - Madonna and the politics of queer sex, Lisa Henderson Madonna's postmodern feminism - bringing the margins back to the centre, C. Schwichtenberg. Part 3 Gender trouble - Madonna poses the feminist question: Madonna politics - perversion, repression or subversion? or masks and/as mastery/master-y, E. Ann Kaplan feminist politics and postmodern seductions - Madonna and the struggle for political articulation, Roseann M. Mandzuik seduction, control and the search for authenticity - Madonna's truth or dare, E. Deidre Pribram don't go for second sex, baby!, Melanie Morton. Part 4 The political economy of postmodernism - Madonna as star-commodity: metatextual girl - patriarchy-postmodernism-power-money-Madonna, David Tezlaff Material Girl - the effacements of postmodern culture, Susan Bordo the distance between me and you - Madonna and celestial navigation or (You Can be My LUCKY STAR), Greg Seigworth.

Divided Government and Dysfunctional Politics

Divided Government and Dysfunctional Politics

Global capitalism and National decline: the Thatcher decade in perspective

Part 1 Long waves of class formation: class formation in the world system the temporal dimension of class formation class formation and the political articulation of class interests generations in the bourgeoisie. Part 2 The rise and fall of British hegemony: the making of the British Class structure Britain's imperial decline.

Language as political articulation: East Bengal in 1952

Abstract This paper is an analysis of the role played by the 1952 language movement (bhasha andolan) in East Bengal in the development of a Bengali nationalist discourse. The language movement forged a conscious link between various subaltern social groups, enabling them to transcend existing barriers and transform them into formidable political actors. Using the concept of counter hegemonic striving, this paper argues that the language movement was a definitive outcome of years of counter hegemonic activities of the Bengali subalterns. This process of counter hegemony was especially evident in the peasant insurgency in rural areas and in the building of an alternative political organization. The articulation of political power through these two processes stands in sharp contrast to the efforts of the Muslim League, both ideologically and politically. It negated the idea of the very existence of the Pakistan state, and facilitated new ways of articulating the concept of Bengali nationalism. Although the u...

Denmark: Environmental Conflict and the ‘Greening’ of the Labour Movement

In Denmark, environmentalism has not generated significant political division between the working class and the new middle class; rather, it has reinforced the cleavage between the wage‐earning classes and the self‐employed, as well as the political cleavage between left and right. This is a warning against deterministic approaches, ignoring the importance of political articulation. The successfulness of the Danish Social Democrats in reinforcing the environmental consciousness of its adherents furthermore indicates that the conventional picture of the political weakness of the Danish Social Democrats, as compared to the Norwegian and Swedish sister parties, should perhaps be reconsidered when evaluating the parties' adaptability to the demands of post‐industrial society.

Media and the Chinese public; The spirit of the Chinese media

In China, media has a very important political role, but it is primarily an instrumental one. Media is not considered a politically independent or neutral enterprise, nor is journalism considered an autonomous profession. The purpose of the media and of journalism, as Party Chairman Hu Yaobang puts it in appendix 3, is to serve as "mouthpiece of the party." It is also true, as Lu Dingyi makes clear in appendix 2, that the media has the duty to be in constant and close contact with the people, serving not only their informational needs but also facilitating their political articulation. Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 the public informational role of the media has been taken much more seriously. In theory, these top-down and bottom-up functions are in harmony because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) serves the interests of the masses. In practice, the ambiguity translates into direct party control of media and considerable journalistic vulnerability to changes in political wind. Journalism in China, as elsewhere, attracts some adventurous souls who constantly test the limits of the allowable and who thereby define the current and shifting limits of journalistic elbowroom, and current party policy encourages experimentation and treats false steps fairly leniently. However, vulnerability in general produces caution, and caution expresses itself in many of the traits criticized by the media audience: questionable reporting, stereotyping, monotonous repetition of the same front-page material and so forth.

Change and internationalization in industry: toward a sectoral interpretation of West German Politics

Sectoral growth and change in the postwar West German economy have been affected both by the specialization inherited from prewar times and by the general Western evolution of demand and production along “Neo-Fordist” lines. These two factors have also shaped West Germany's politics, particularly the organization of labor and bourgeoisie, and their alliances with each other and with the state apparatus. The three most important economic crisis situations since 1945 were turning points in the political articulation of socioeconomic interests. The crisis of the immediate postwar period resulted in a politics determined by the conflict of interests between owners of capital and the rest of the population, especially labor from 1947 onward. The Social Democratic party (SPD) was outside the government. A temporary interruption of sustained and highly differentiated sectoral growth in 1966 led to greater political attention to sectoral problems and less attention to class conflict. The SPD entered, indeed led, the government. Since the mid 1970s, the economy's structural crisis, compounded by growing foreign competition, has reaccentuated class conflict in political life. The SPD lost power in 1982.

Local Politics in Communist Countries

There are many reasons why it is important to study local politics -- political culture, government, political process -- in Communist party states. As in all politics, local politics in Communist party states are the political articulation of the local community. This is the political arena where policies concerning local issues are formulated by the officials. This is where the officials are approached by citizens with their particular demands. This is where citizens articulate their preferences, aspirations, and values through political participation. And this is where officials, both elected and appointed, are recruited.In this volume, Daniel N. Nelson has assembled a team of international scholars to consider local politics in Communist party states including the U.S.S.R., China, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Together, they explore how local social and political forces are articulated in the national and party organizations; they also reveal how the study of comparative local politics provides vitality for the study of national politics. Rather than treating local communities as receivers and translators of national inputs, the contributors demonstrate that the local dimension and national politics mutually influence one another and illuminate the social reality in communist societies.

Self-Management as a Development Alternative Reflections on the Peruvian Experience

Self-management as a form of workers’ organization and economic democracy no longer enjoys the degree of support that Peru’s government gave it in former years. Workers have experienced a decline in their living standards in the context of the country’s several serious economic crises in past decades, and this has affected the viability and even threatened the existence of many of their firms. In the context of a transition from military to civilian rule, of new forms (or, rather, the resurgence of old forms) of political articulation favorable to the urban bourgeoisie, and of an improving export income which promises to restore real income levels to their earlier levels, self-managed enterprises and their worker-owners face new challenges and opportunities.