Everyday Politics Research Articles

Road to the Periphery

In the past two decades, everyday politics of infrastructure have garnered rich scholarly attention. A polysemous infrastructure that permeates everyday life, roads for long have emerged as effective sites of state craft. Employing the case of a road leading to the Sino-Indian border area of Tawang, this article argues that roads are critical to the project of border-making and management. Drawing from my road journeys to Tawang, I discuss the ways in which roads are strategised by the state to govern its border citizens. Often, visual proximity of roads casts the impression of the state which is near to its people. However, this article foregrounds that even through their conspicuous absence and disrepair, roads register the palpable presence of the state.

Indicators are Relational: Navigating Knowledge and Power in the Development and Implementation of Coastal-Marine Indicators.

In many environment and resource management contexts (e.g., integrated coastal management, ecosystem-based fisheries management), indicator selection and development are perceived as a largely technical, bureaucratic, and scientific challenge. As such, choices about indicators and their application are often treated as external from everyday politics and dynamics of social power. Our aim here is to highlight the value of a relational perspective that weaves power and knowledge together in the context of indicator development and implementation. We highlight four critical dimensions of this relational perspective that may lead to better indicator process outcomes: 1) centering identity and positionality to reflect power differentials; 2) emphasizing the importance of indicator 'fit' and the politics of scale; 3) engaging rather than erasing social-ecological complexity; and 4) reflecting on social norms and relationships to foster adaptation and learning. These four dimensions are rarely considered in most indicator initiatives, including those that are more participatory in design and implementation. The dimensions we outline here emerge from the grounded experience of managers and practitioners, including indicator processes in which we are currently engaged, as well as a scoping review of the literature on indicators for coastal and marine governance and conservation specifically. However, the four dimensions and relational focus are relevant to a wide range of resource and environmental management contexts and provide a pathway to catalyze more effective indicator processes for decision-making and governance more generally.

Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster's parliamentary e-petitions system.

Popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy has encouraged governments and legislatures worldwide to experiment with democratic innovations. However, despite calls for a ‘systemic’ approach to the study of democratic engagement and participation, empirical knowledge is limited about the diffusion of democratic innovations within civil society, and, in particular, about the connective mechanisms that bring the ‘voice’ of citizens to the ‘ears’ of political elites. This article responds to this gap, presenting original empirical research examining the UK House of Commons’ e-petitions system. This research maps public engagement with parliamentary e-petitions across a range of expressive spaces, and highlights the facilitative role of non-institutional intermediaries. However, it also underlines the predominant role of institutional actors in structuring public participation, and shows that effective transmission between the informal public and formal political spheres remains contingent on both ‘designed-in powers’ of institutional coupling and ‘developed practices’ of public engagement. Through this analysis, the article makes an important contribution to debates concerning democratic innovations, political participation, and institutional design.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9.

Cycles of insecurities: Understanding the everyday politics of young Londoners

The concept of everyday insecurity was developed to explain people's lived experiences in the wake of 9/11 and 7/7 and the perceived threat of terrorism. This article develops the concept to investigate the everyday insecurities experienced by young Londoners in the wake of the financial crisis and climate crisis. We employ innovative youth-centred methods to explore the issues that shape the everyday lives of young people in the UK capital. Through narrative analysis we represent the voices of young Londoners, identifying the role of identity, emotion, the attribution of responsibility and sense of agency in their discussions. We find young Londoners' narratives are dominated by “cycles of insecurity”: interconnected problems of housing, crime and so on, from which some feel it is almost impossible to escape. This helps explain why lack of efficacy and a sense of agency is a particular problem for younger generations. These experiences are more relevant than ever in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the urgent need to integrate youth voice into Covid-recovery, to allow cities to generate a more sustainable public policy.

Relying on the Kindness of Strangers: Welfare-Providers to Seafarers and the Symbolic Construction of Community

Seafarers who call into ports usually hope for, or anticipate, a visit from people who provide them with welfare services—from SIM cards and mobile top-up vouchers to religious or nonreligious reading materials, and free transport to the nearest seafarers’ center or shopping mall. In seafarers’ centers, seafarers can normally use free internet facilities, enjoy drinks from the bar, avail themselves of remittance services, and if they wish, practice their faith in rooms/chapels dedicated to religious observance. While port chaplains are usually the people that seafarers associate with welfare services, port chaplains are not alone in providing these services—there are also paid staff and volunteers working in seafarers’ centers. This worldwide community of welfare providers displays the patina of a homogeneous bloc, sharing the same functions, activities, and end-goals in their everyday pursuits in ports and seafarers’ centers. However, this belies a more complex and sometimes fractured community of welfare providers in ports. While their services could be described with one coherent narrative of kindness to strangers, members of this community come from different backgrounds and are employed by different welfare organizations, and in the case of port chaplains, by different religious maritime charities with varying theologies. As a result of this, and the challenges to and changing contexts of maritime welfare services, in ports worldwide, this community is riven with contestation and everyday politics, which may be associated with a symbolically constructed community. This article expands on these issues. It is underpinned by research into welfare provision in two UK ports and in five other countries. It highlights narratives of unity and conflict, opening the doors to a community of people rarely noticed by social scientists.

Populist everyday politics in the (mediatized) age of social media: The case of Instagram celebrity advocacy

This article is interested in populism outside the master frame of institutional politics (populist parties/leaders), considering, instead, the populist potential of celebrities’ everyday politics on social media. To understand this potential, the article suggests, we need to understand how celebrities are compelled by today’s mediatized communicative ecosystem to perform themselves as ordinary advocates for people-victims. We need to examine how the performative logic that this ecosystem forces into platforms accommodates certain emotional claims to ordinariness and normative-moral claims to advocacy—who is (un)worthy of a place in the victimized people that celebrities should advocate for. The article does so by analyzing two paradigmatically different case studies: Lady Gaga’s legacy-status and Greta Thunberg’s influencer-style performances of celebrity advocacy on Instagram. The analytical discussion leads to contemplating the mediatized populist politics of everyday politics that both perform, despite their differences, and its ambivalent relationship with liberal democracy (centrist moderation and neoliberal consolidation).

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

Everyday Spaces: Bars, Alcohol and the Spatial Framing of Everyday Political Practice and Interaction in Fascist Italy

Whilst the ‘everyday’ is, of course, a temporal designator, connected to the chronology of human experience, in reality, ‘everyday life’ historians have often used a spatial frame to seek to understand past historical actors’ everyday lives, experiences and practices. Focusing on Fascist Italy and using the example of ‘bars’ and the practices of consumption, political (and other) sociability, transaction and exchanges enacted within these spaces, this article explores some of the possibilities opened up by using a spatial frame to examine everyday practices and lived experiences in a dictatorial context. Thinking about ‘everyday life’ and the lived experience of dictatorship through a spatial lens not only requires a shift in terms of the venues that we investigate, away from classic seats and sites of formal projections of power and towards those spaces – like bars – in which the ‘unofficial relations of power’ were articulated and negotiated. It also prompts us to ‘play with scales’, as Jacques Revel put it, to examine the unit of the individual body, the street, or the city not just to identify microscopic historical practices, but to understand how macroscopic structures, processes and power relations operated at the level of the everyday and vice versa, highlighting dynamic, reciprocal relationships – between institutions and individuals, state and society, centre and periphery, and among historical actors themselves – and to examine the processes of movement between these scales of experience. In this way, through the examination of interactions and practices enacted in Italian bars, the article will explore a novel facet of the ‘lived experience’ of these dictatorships and demonstrate the value in understanding dictatorships as being constructed neither exclusively ‘from above’ or ‘from below’ but both between and across these units of analysis.

Neo-materialist movement organisations and the matter of scale: scaling through institutions as prefigurative politics?

ABSTRACT Consumer collective action is commonly connected to individualised politics, market responsibility and local utopias. In this paper, we take an alternative point of departure and discuss the (emergence of) neo-materialist movement organisations (NMMOs) as mobilising prefigurative everyday politics in local organising and creating strategies toward alternative global futures. Our approach is threefold. First, we introduce the concept of neo-materialist movement organisations and, second, outline their organising in the everyday context and prefigurative commitments. Third, we explore different strategies of scaling toward alternative futures with particular focus on (controversial) institutional avenues. We contribute to the emerging literature on prefigurative politics in consumer movements by problematising the dominant approach to social change trapped in local inwardness. We further highlight the potential for systemic changes via local authorities, or what we call scaling through institutions.

Labor Law Reforms after the Populist Turn in Hungary

Abstract The characteristics of Hungarian populism and its effects on labor and social policy are rather different compared to those of western Member States of the EU. These differences are due to the different experiences related to inter- and intra-EU migration and to the difference in how the EU’s austerity measures were imposed during the economic crisis. The two distinctive elements are the workfare regime which replaces the welfare state, and anti-pluralism. In the workfare model, ‘hard-working people’ are pictured as an idealized mass of employees who are disciplined and striving for betterment every day; and whose jobs and wellbeing are jeopardized by illegal migrants and the idle poor. However, labor law does not strengthen the rights of ‘hard-working people’ or support them in asserting their rights against their employers. While the Roma have been described as the undeserving poor and mainstreamed in everyday politics and practice, guarantees and protective measures have been severely curtailed in social policy, amplifying the insecurity and material deprivation of those who lose their jobs. Regarding collective labor law, the lack of an autonomous social dialogue supports anti-pluralist trends, a characteristic of populist governance. The fundamental elements of democratic control, such as participation or trade union rights have been largely eliminated to cement the executive power of the coalition.

Asymmetric Communication and Internal Exclusion in Everyday Political Talk

Citizens' everyday political talk is the foundation and mainspring of deliberative democracy. Accordingly, citizens' equal and inclusive participation in political discussions is deemed crucial for this “talk-centric” vision of normatively superior democratic will-formation. Yet, discussing politics is a quite demanding activity, and research has shown that de facto not everyone has equal access to this arena of political communication. Some citizens talk about public affairs almost constantly, others more sparingly, and yet others not at all. These inequalities reflect imbalances in structural and psychological resources. Little is known, however, about what happens once individuals have entered conversations about public affairs. The article breaks new ground by examining communicative asymmetries that ordinary people experience when talking about politics with members of their overall and core networks. By muting their voices they disadvantage certain citizens, thus impairing the discursive equality that is essential for deliberative democracy. Drawing on a unique high-quality survey conducted in Germany, the article finds such experiences to take different forms of which some are quite widespread. Many citizens resort to passive listening and contribute little to unfolding conversations. Smaller shares misrepresent their true standpoints, change subjects to avoid problematic topics, drop out of unpleasant conversations, or feel silenced by other interlocutors. The article contextualizes these communicative asymmetries in the broader theoretical framework of deliberative democrats' conception of discursive inequality. To examine how they come about it proposes and tests a model of internal exclusion that refers to social structural inequality, psychological dispositions, and attributes of the discussant networks within which political conversations take place. Social structural inequality is found to be of limited relevance. Individuals' communicative efficacy and orientations toward political conflict are more important predictors of their ability to cope with the challenges of political talk than aspects of general politicization like political interest, attitude strength and internal efficacy. Encountering political disagreement is normatively central for deliberative democracy, but empirically it stands out as a powerful social driver of asymmetric communication. Its impact is strongly conditioned by individuals' structural attributes and psychological dispositions.

Karoo Sanatorium: A Speculative Fiction Based on Many True Stories

SummaryIn the early twentieth century, with tuberculosis taking hold in many European cities, sanatoriums in South Africa’s semi‐arid Karoo region were emerging as prime healing destinations for “consumptive immigrants.” Today, the Karoo continues to be marketed as a reprieve from the pathogens of city life, most recently as a “low‐viral escape” amid the COVID‐19 pandemic. Inspired by ethnographic and archival research, this dystopian fiction imagines the contemporary re‐opening of a Karoo sanatorium and the everyday politics in which such a project might be enmeshed. The story is followed by an ethnographic statement that explains some of the research on which the story is based.

Dwelling as politics: An emancipatory praxis of/through care and space in everyday life

Drawing on the theory of the Paradigm of Governing and the Paradigm of Dwelling by the philosopher Fernández-Savater , this paper attempts to theorise a spatial politics of care through an ethnographic analysis of three grassroots initiatives – a social kitchen, an accommodation centre with refugees and a community centre – set up in Athens (Greece) as a counter-response to the crisis politics via austerity enforced in the country (2010–2018), as well as to the renewed EU border system (2016). The everyday politics of these self-organised groups is conceptualised as a Politics of Dwelling. The concept refers to a form of political praxis and capacity forged within the sphere of social reproduction and everyday life. It is argued that Dwelling as politics holds an emancipatory potentiality beyond capitalist relationships, which lies in (1) its situated/embodied nature, which marks collective processes of decision-making and organisation with an ethics of care, (2) the central role that space and material resources play in those processes.

The Muslim Brothers in Society: Everyday Politics, Social Action, and Islamism in Mubarak's Egypt. Marie Vannetzel (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2021). Pp. 328. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9789774169625

The Muslim Brothers in Society: Everyday Politics, Social Action, and Islamism in Mubarak's Egypt. Marie Vannetzel (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2021). Pp. 328. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9789774169625 - Volume 54 Issue 1

Book review: James Staples. 2020. Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India

James Staples. 2020. Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India. Seattle: University of Washington Press. xvi + 229 pp. Figures, notes, glossary, references, index. $30 (paperback)

Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India By James Staples. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. xvi, 229 pp. ISBN: 9780295747873 (paper).

Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India By James Staples. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. xvi, 229 pp. ISBN: 9780295747873 (paper). - Volume 81 Issue 1

Accountability in Humanitarian Action

Abstract Although a growing number of NGOs are combining humanitarian and development activities, it was long the case that humanitarian action was isolated from discussions and practices in the world of development. The work of saving lives was deemed to be guided solely by the humanitarian principles, and discussions on accountability were rare. In the 1990s, humanitarian standards initiatives arose in recognition that humanitarian organisations were not accountable to affected populations. This article aims to take stock of accountability initiatives and practices in the sector. It builds on accountability theory in distinguishing upward, sideways, and downward accountability, and incorporates formal and informal forms of accountability. It is based on empirical research in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone. The first part of the article outlines the history of accountability in the humanitarian sector, including an accountability timeline, and discusses current trends in performances around accountability towards displaced people, minorities, and other recipients of aid. It then presents the findings from the three countries. The article concludes by calling attention to the everyday politics of accountability, the widening accountability arena, the differential accountability demands on international and national aid providers, and the crucial importance of sideways accountability to bring accountability to a next level.

Who Talks and Who Listens? How Political Involvement Influences the Potential for Democratic Deliberation in Everyday Political Talk

In times of rising partisan polarization and increasing disenchantment with political elites, everyday political talk could constitute an important venue for citizen deliberation. Everyday political discussions offer ordinary people opportunities to strengthen deliberative skills, form considered preferences ,and hone political identities in relation to others. However, informal political discussions seldom follow the norms of formal deliberative fora, calling into question how often such everyday talk really enables democratic deliberation in the broader public. The answer is essential to assess the deliberative potential of everyday political talk and thus to understand its role in the deliberative system. Focusing on the democratic and deliberative standards of reason-giving, mutual respect, equality, and inclusion, we develop a multi-step model of democratic deliberation in everyday political talk, in which the potential for democratic deliberation depends on the presence of all four core standards. As individuals’ propensity for democratic deliberation is likely to vary with their level of political involvement, both in terms of how much they care about politics and how strongly they identify with political groups, we consider both dimensions when modeling democratic deliberation in individuals’ everyday political discussions. We test all steps of the model with data from a large panel survey tracing the informal political discussion networks of 18,079 German voters during the year leading up to the national elections in 2017. Our findings indicate that everyday political talk is more deliberative than expected, as the three core standards of democratic deliberation we can measure are largely upheld in people’s political exchanges.

Revolutionary abandon

Abstract In Nicaragua, the political trajectory of the governing FSLN has been understood as a transition from underground revolutionary circle toward clientelistic political machine. This article traces the emergence of these two key images in political and scholarly discourse, and shows how they have come to inform everyday politics in a community of rural government supporters, who—within a defunct agrarian cooperative—struggle to participate in the government's project of fostering an “Organized People.” For those excluded from this populist political model, the views of inclusion produced by ideas about circles and machines give rise to alternative strategies for contesting what James Ferguson terms “abjection.” The case demonstrates the value, for an emerging anthropology of political “abandonment,” of attending to the formal properties of political images.

Gendered infrastructure and liminal space in Delhi’s unauthorized colonies

This paper takes an embodied approach to the lived experiences and everyday politics of liminal neighborhoods and infrastructures in Delhi’s unauthorized colonies, which lack official entitlements to networked infrastructures such as water and sewerage. Bringing a feminist political ecology lens to critical infrastructure studies, I show how gendered social relations, subjectivities, and the unequal experience of urban liminality are tied to accessing water and its fragmented infrastructures beyond the network. In particular, liminal infrastructural space is produced in unauthorized colonies through not only these neighborhoods’ quasi-legal status and unequal access to urban water, but also through gendered discourses and the socially differentiated ways water infrastructures are co-produced, managed, and made livable by residents. As water is primarily accessed beyond the network via tubewells and tankers, I demonstrate how these fractured modalities ultimately constitute gendered infrastructural assemblages that enable water’s circulation across neighborhoods but also serve to deepen forms of gendered marginality and differentiation. Here, gendered infrastructural practices and labor to negotiate and supplement fragmented components of water infrastructure shape subjectivities and possibilities for social relations and urban claims-making. These infrastructural assemblages expose both the situated experience of urban liminality, as well as its transcendent possibilities.