Counter-hegemonic Forces Research Articles

`Decent Work'

With the proliferation of supranational trade agreements and the deregulation of national labour markets, calls for representative international organizations and international mechanisms aimed at improving the conditions of workers are growing. One outcome of these developments is that international organizations, like the International Labour Organization (ILO), are rethinking their roles under globalization. This article examines the ILO's new platform of action known as Decent Work, exploring whether it represents a challenge to the hegemonic order characterizing the organization historically. It finds that Decent Work is emblematic of the evolving hegemonic order in the ILO yet struggles over the platform reveal counter-hegemonic forces at its margins. Decent Work thus represents an effort at mediating tensions inside the ILO between global capital, member states, trade unions and NGOs and its two leading initiatives reflect this role: the Social Declaration and the commitment to craft standards to improve the situation of marginalized workers.

To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 (review)

To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965. JEFFREY L. GOULD. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998; 305 pp. Reviewed by JAMES QUESADA San Francisco State University To Die in This Way is an exquisite ethnohistorical description and analysis not only of how local, regional, and national forces and dynamics shaped local identities and popular ideas, but also produced constituencies. These constituencies-Indians, ladinos, landlords, intellectuals, workers, politicos-have continued to produce and reproduce myths and rationales that, however unevenly, contribute to very continuities of tensions and fractures lines that are rooted in nineteenth century. Gould describes individual indigenous communities according to how varied local social and political forces shaped specific identities that diverge regionally from one another, which in sum calls into question conventional notions of Indianness. Gould's work provides a foundation for understanding current patchwork of class, inter-ethnic, and ideological antagonisms in Nicaragua. In To Die in This Way Gould argues that there are no longer Indians in western Nicaragua while simultaneously exploring just what indigenous identity consists of today. This is no small feat considering he must contend with dominant myth of mestizaje which has forged a homogenizing nationalist discourse based on extinction of Central and Pacific region indigenas. Gould does this without succumbing to a salvage project of finding real Indians grounded on essentialist notions of authenticity. Gould closely examines three indigenous communities (Comunidades Indiginas) and provides a finely textured history of each while eschewing a totalizing explanation that overrides distinctive clusters and trajectories of power that shaped each community. His work provides a firm grounding for understanding how over time destruction, crippling, and survival of Indian communities refracts discursive and ideological assaults, along with land acquisitions, forced labor practices, and co-optation of indigenous organizations. The latter combined to alter significantly way not only non-Indians think of Indians, but how Indians think of themselves. Could begins by examining last major Indian uprising in western Nicaragua, in central highland municipality of Matagalpa. The eventual victory of civilization over barbarism is also credited as contributing to birth of the myth of Nicaragua mestiza (p. 38). The myth of mestizaje, whether curious biological melding of Indians with whites or transformation of Indians to mestizo cum ladino through culture loss and shifted loyalties, requires a sharp distinction be made between Indians and others that distorts actual relations that obtained between them. At time of uprising, Matagalpan Indians were religiously loyal to Jesuits as well as imbued with a protonationalist sentiment that included other Indians that allowed for tactical alliances with Liberal and Conservative factions. Such details run counter to a discourse of mestizaje that depicts Indian as barbarians, who impede progress, are lazy, wild, and unreliable. It is precisely variety of relations Comunidad Indigena forge and reforge to resist Liberal attacks on Comunidad itself that lead it to struggle in a manner that was ultimately constraining. In countering real and symbolic attacks, Comunidad entered into agreements and tactical alliances with nonIndian counter-hegemonic forces and in doing so, unwittingly, if not reluctantly accepted, or at least legitimized, a nationalist ideological logic that ultimately worked to undermine their very social and political integrity. If in Matagalpa Comunidad Indigena ultimately was splintered and increasingly ineffectual, it did survive. …

International Plug 'n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy

One of the most dramatic changes in world politics has been the rise to prominence of citizen networks. Among the many factors responsible for their emergence are new communication technologies, and in particular the World-Wide Web. Opinions on the nature and significance of these citizen networks, however, are mixed. Some applaud citizen networks as potential counter-hegemonic forces and expressions of democratic participation. Others see them, on the contrary, as undemocratic and largely destructive. Straddling both of these views is a third argument that suggests “real” communities cannot be sustained on the Internet, hence calling into question the long-term viability of citizen networks as actors on the world political stage. To help push these debates further, this article examines the case of the citizen networks that emerged to lobby against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, focusing in particular on how the Internet played a part in the opposition movement. The case suggests that, contrary to those who see new media as an obstacle to global citizen etworks, the Internet and World-Wide Web greatly facilitated their activities. As a consequence, citizen networks will likely continue to grow and expand, intruding into international policymaking processes. The article concludes by examining several global public policy issues that are raised by this shift in the landscape of world politics that will have to be addressed by practitioners of international relations in years to come.

South Africa's subaltern press: A case study in reading a cultural text

The poststructuralist view of language posits that all texts, including cultures as ‘texts,’ are constructed essentially out of their own rhetorics. The meaning of any text is continually ‘deconstructed’ and any imposition of a particular or ‘authorised’ or ‘official’ meaning on an utterance or text is usually an exercise of power. Following a poststructuralist view of language, this article argues that South Africa's subaltern press mirrored in many ways the hegemonic and counterhegemonic forces at work within South Africa's subaltern community. The article shows that struggles for power took the form of struggles for control of the discourse, defining and redefining the discursive strategies used to frame news and entertainment. Even the conditions for authorising news as news, including the question of the newsworthiness of events, could vary from one communal context to another, depending on whether one was ultimately in communion or in conflict with the dominant cultural order. The subaltern community, on the other hand, was vulnerable to shifts in hegemonic discourse represented by South Africa's white-dominated commercial press.

Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital

dimensions. These distinctions are elaborated to help explain aspects of the changing nature of present-day capitalism, with particular reference to aspects of transformation in the 1980s and beyond. Partly building upon Robert Cox's analysis of social forces and world orders, and Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, we seek to explain some of the conditions under which a more regime of accumulation and an associated hegemony of transnational capital might develop. Such a hegemony could never be complete because of counterhegemonic forces and contradictory elements in the internationalization of capital. Some requirements for an alternative counter-hegemonic historic bloc are sketched, with suggestions for a research agenda. In this essay we seek to advance the theorization and interpretation of the dynamics and contours of the emerging global political economy, and to outline an agenda for study in this field. Our perspective differs from and can be read as a critique of classical marxism, world systems theory, public choice, and neo-realist theory. Central to our argument is the distinction between direct and structural forms of power and their place within present-day capitalism. Through developing this contrast, in combination with Gramscian concepts-of hegemony historic bloc and the extended state-we seek to meet two major challenges. The first is to better integrate domestic and international levels of analysis. We think that a key to the resolution of this problem has been provided by Cox (1987). His analysis of social forces points to a more comprehensive and flexible approach to the question of

Critical Theory, Curricular Transformation and Feminist Mainstreaming

This paper examines critical theory, especially the work of Antonio Gramsci, in relation to feminist curricular change efforts in teacher education. It is contended that women's studies is potentially a prime example of curriculum as counter-hegemonic force. Critical theory is taken to task for the male-centeredness of its search for historical actors. The possibilities for fundamental social change that open up when we put women at the center of our transformative aspirations are explored.