Ideological Contestation Research Articles

Political Rhetoric of East Java’s Governor and Deputy Governor Candidates

Public debate is one of the stages in a General Election determined by the Commission of Election (KPU) to present the vision, missions, ideas, and programs of prospective leaders to the public. Political rhetoric is a specific study on how political actors try to persuade or attract public voters’ sympathy. This study aimed to reveal Governor and Deputy Governor candidates’ rhetoric in the 2018 East Java Public Debate, using an interpretative qualitative research method with political rhetorical analysis from Finlayson. This study used documentation techniques of the broadcasted recording of Public Debate I, II, and III by TVRI Surabaya and JTV Surabaya for the data collection. The study results indicated that the two candidates for Governor and Deputy Governor of East Java in 2018 had their respective political rhetoric strategies in persuading prospective voters when the Public Debate took place, started from the context contestation; candidate character in rhetoric; contestation perception; and ideological contestation.

Political language and fake news

ABSTRACT This article outlines political symbolism and language in the 2019 election in Indonesia and aims to situate fake news narratives within them. By analysing official election campaign posters (spanduk), it is argued that Islam and nationalism are the only ideological references and are applied by both camps, leaving no room for other forms of ideological contestation. The article suggests understanding this phenomenon as a hegemonic, Gramscian ‘common sense’ which creates a notion of unity of the nation. This unity, however, is disturbed by hoaxes as in fake news. But instead of referring to hoaxes only as a threat to Indonesian politics, we argue that hoaxes are an integral part of the ‘common sense’. Hoaxes are a means to make the ideological framework of Islam and nationalism accessible for the popular masses, applying a kasar (rough) approach, contradicting the halus (soft) language of the political elite. They are also inevitably a means to create the impression that the camps are distinct. As hoaxes refer to the constitutive outside of the nationalism-Islam complex (as Islamists suggest that Jokowi has ties to the outlawed Communist Party or that Prabowo aims to establish an Islamic state, for instance), they serve the function of maintaining the ideological order in post-New Order Indonesia.

Strategi Bimbingan Tokoh Agama di Bangka Belitung: Kontestasi dalam Masyarakat Pedesaan

This discourse aims to describe the strategy of Guru Zuhri and Ustaz Fathur Rozi in providing Islamic guidance to the people of Kayu Besi Village, Puding Besar District, Bangka Regency, Bangka Belitung Islands, examining the contestation that the two have done to gain community legitimacy, and analyzing the extent of the contestation of the two figures. religion in Bangka Belitung. This research uses qualitative research with a field research approach. As for data collection techniques, the authors used in-depth interviews, participatory observation and documentation. The results showed that in providing Islamic guidance to the community, Guru Zuhri did not just provide religious advice. However, he also provides assistance to various problems faced by members of the guidance and village community, both personal, family, social, and especially religious issues. Meanwhile, the provision of Islamic guidance carried out by Ustaz Fathur Rozi was only limited to giving religious advice or it could be said by recitation. Guidance is given not to touch aspects of community life. In the sense that it does not solve problems for problems that develop in life, either individuals or groups of people. In addition, in providing Islamic guidance to rural communities, the two of them both contest each other to gain community legitimacy. The contestation is real. There are three forms of contestation that occur in both of them, namely: First, the contestation of wisdom. Second, power contestation. Third, ideological contestation. At the end of the contestation story, Guru Zuhri got more and more legitimacy from the community for his character. Meanwhile, Ustaz Fathur Rozi lost legitimacy from the community, so he tried again to build that legitimacy.

PERSAINGAN IDEOLOGI DAN MUATAN PROPAGANDA DALAM DRAMA SEMASA PENDUDUKAN JEPUN DI INDONESIA

This research aimed to analyze ideological contestation and propaganda content in drama texts written during the Japanese Occupation in Indonesia. The drama texts used are ‘Kami, Perempoean’ by Asia Poetera (in Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, 2018) and ‘Pandu Partiwi’ by Merayu Sukma (in McGlynn, et al (eds.), 2006). The approach of this research utilised Gramsci’s theories on hegemony and ideology. Within both texts, there was an ideological contestation between Asian nationalism and Western colonialism. An ideological contestation between humanism and nationalism was also identified in both texts. In addition, Japanese propaganda was detected in ‘Kami, Perempoean’ and ‘Pandu Partiwi’ as a call for collaboration with various organisations established by the Japanese. There were also anti-West sentiments and an emphasis towards specific interests of Japan.Keywords: ideology, contestation, Japanese, drama texts, propaganda.

Public-Private Partnerships in Alberta, Canada: Towards the Institutionalization of Policy Reform

The deployment of public-private partnerships (P3s) in Alberta, Canada has stalled following the suspension of the program in 2016. While P3s have become increasingly popular, the dynamics of P3 institutionalization remain unclear and overlooked. In response to Casady et al.'s (2018) call, this study aims to investigate the nature and extent of P3 institutionalization using Alberta's program as an effective longitudinal case study. This study finds that Alberta's P3 program, facing the pressures of limited funding availability and a previously failed partnership attempt, was initiated as an experimental effort designed to fill a serious infrastructure gap and motivated by existential political interests, but without the necessary institutional and organizational anchors to ensure program stability, permanency and continuity. Furthermore, Alberta's P3 program has become the object of ideological contestation between recent successive governments. Following Johnson et al. (2006), this study contends that Alberta's P3 program has stalled at the “diffusion stage” and unable to transition to the “general validation stage” needed for its widespread acceptance as an institutionalized model of infrastructure delivery

The Competing Politics of Austrian Glocalization Covid-19, Crime and (Anti-)Racism

Based on a carefully contextualised discussion of discursive and semiotic contributions to public debate in Austria during the politically charged summer of 2020, this article captures ideologically different, at times mutually opposed glocalizing strategies. The social sites and entanglement of “the global” and “the local” examined are the following: a parliamentary address in which neo-nationalist rhetoric is framed by global points of reference; local appropriations of the Black Lives Matter movement for the purposes of symbolic protest against public monuments commemorating problematic regional histories; and recent public debates in Austria that illustrate the glocalization of everyday politics. In each example, global contexts provide crucial momentum for the articulation of local concerns and mobilisations. The ensuing analysis helps illuminate some of the distinctly transnational, enabling conditions for ideological contest in Austria today. In methodological terms, the discussion demonstrates that an understanding of locally specific appropriations of a diversity of global flows demands ethnographic sensitivity, historical contextualisation, and local knowledge.

Contesting ‘Permit-and-Licence Raj’: Economic Conservatism and the Idea of Democracy in 1950s India*

Abstract Economic conservatism in India traces its roots in the fragmentation of political consensus following the success of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. Framed in the context of the Cold War, long before the 1991 liberalization reforms, this economic conservatism blended anti-communism, free-market advocacy, and the defence of property. This was expressed as the central agenda of the broadly secular Swatantra Party, an effort to consolidate two-party democracy that emerged by the late 1960s as the most serious challenger to the dominant Congress Party. Swatantra brought together diverse progenitors aligned with American development ideas for the Third World. This article reconstructs Indian economic conservatism’s transnational history through an interconnected study of three founding figures of the party and the network of urban associations and periodicals brewing alternative ideas beneath the layers of dominant opinion in which they were embedded. It recasts non-aligned India as a site of ideological contestation affected by the Cold War. Swatantra’s lasting critique of Indian political economy was indicative of a more widely held dissent on India’s development strategy, which has helped to drive the fragmentation of Indian politics. Demands for the party’s revival reveal a desire for a secular alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Ideological Conflicts in a Collection of Short Stories of Kera Di Kepala (A Monkey on the Head) by Soeprijadi Tomodihardjo: A Study of Michel Foucault's Critical Discourse Analysis

The novelty of this research is the construction of CDA Foucault's theory on a collection of short stories of Kera Di Kepala (A Monkey On The Head) by Soeprijadi Tomodihardjo (ST) (2006). The contribution of this research strengthens the concept of ideological contestation in CDA theory.The purpose of this research is to find a counter ideology against the dominant ideology in the New Order and Reformation Order in Indonesian exil literature. The theory used by CDA Michel Foucault. Research approach of constructionist Jorgensen and Phillips (2002). The data source for the collection of short stories of Kera D i Kepala (A Monkey On The Head) by ST. Technique of collecting data is critical reading, recording, coding data. CDA of Foucault's perspective data analysis technique follows Alba-Juez's (2009) formula, namely: (1) topic selection, (2) data deepening, (3) theme identification, (4) searching for absent/hidden discourse elements, (5) search for meaning relations between elements of discourse, and (6) contextualization of discourse elements in the power-knowledge network. Findings: ideology of democracy-socialist-humanism as a counter ideology for the exile authors of 1965 which was fought with liberal-democracy ideology as the dominant ideology of the New Order and Reformation-Order governments in Indonesia. Keywords : conflict, ideology, critical discourse analysis, humanism-socialist DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-22-07 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

Strategies of ideological polarisation in the online news media: A social actor analysis of Megawati Soekarnoputri

This article examines strategies of ideological polarisation in the discourse of the Indonesian online news media site, Kompas.com. Applying Van Leeuwen’s model of social actor analysis and van Dijk’s concept of the ideological square, the study focuses on the representation of Megawati Soekarnoputri, leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) as an icon of ideological contestation during the 2014 presidential election. Situated in the era of digital platform convergence, the analysis uncovers a pattern of strategically ambiguous representations of Megawati and her apparently transgressive actions and interactions. This practice entices readers to ‘read between the lines’ and activate their ideological repertoire to determine in-group and out-group members. It also enables Kompas.com to pursue commercial objectives and navigate journalistic constraints by obscuring explicitly ideological content. The implications are discussed in terms of the impact of online news media discourse upon democratic political engagement, and women’s political participation.

Loose Coordination or Ideological Contestation? Transnational Party Activities of German Political Parties on the EU Military Operation EUNAVFOR Med

AbstractThis article examines cross-national coordination on foreign and security policy among political parties of the same family. Drawing on resource dependence theory, it presents a case study of German political parties and their transnational activities on the controversial EU military operation to combat human trafficking in the Mediterranean Sea, EU Naval Force Mediterranean. The article finds evidence for transnational information exchange and coordination among the opposition parties, radical left and the greens, but less so among the government party, social democrats. The degree of transnational party activities can be understood by not only the extent to which parties share a common view in the first place but also the different resource needs of the government and opposition parties.

Rural geographies and the New Chinese Cinemas: Imaging progressive places in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Dust in the Wind and Jia Zhangke’s Platform

The New Chinese Cinemas were unprecedented in critiquing official narratives of progress through dramatic location-shot images of rural Taiwan and China. Much more than standing in as a picturesque backdrop, the rural was a site of complex ideological contestations. Yet, existing scholarship overlooks the richness of rural representations, reductively interpreting rural films as works of nostalgia and cultural salvage. Through a comparative analysis of representations of landscape, travel and visual perception in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Dust in the Wind () and Jia Zhangke’s Platform (), this article brings into focus the important but largely ignored roles that Hou and Jia have played in envisioning new frameworks for thinking about rural geographies. Drawing from Doreen Massey’s notion of the ‘progressive place’, I investigate how Jiufen and Fenyang – the films’ shooting locations – are stages upon which the directors experimented with imaging and imagining communities. Jiufen is represented in Dust as a porous interface between the urban and rural, a metonym for the film’s representation of Taiwan as a contact zone with China. Platform, by contrast, fashions an image of Fenyang as a non-place, a microcosm of China as it undergoes unchecked neo-liberal development. Significantly, these films went beyond revising rural imaginaries on-screen, to making a material impact on Jiufen and Fenyang by transforming them into landmarks of global film tourism. This work demonstrates how Hou and Jia responded to disorienting social changes not by resisting, but by tactically embracing the blurring of divides between the urban and rural, and local and global.

“Unfortunately, Some Mistakes Were Made”

This paper explores competing narratives of the Stalinist and Soviet past in the Republic of Georgia through examination of two public history sites: the Stalin Museum in Gori and the exhibit of the Soviet Occupation at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. While the former remains a site of Stalin’s cult of personality, largely unaltered even during the “de-Stalinization” campaigns that unfolded in the decades following the dictator’s death in 1953, the latter fails to interrogate Stalin’s unambiguous role in the Bolsheviks’ 1921 invasion and political terror amidst its strong emphasis on the martyrs to the Soviet regime. Both museum sites, we argue, are invested in larger scale political and ideological contestations of Georgia’s past in relation to present concerns that anchor, on the one hand, on economic instability and, on the other, on political assertions of Georgian “Europeanness.” The sites raise important questions about the role museums play in the preservation of a contested past and in shaping divergent visions of national memory and identity.

Negotiating the boundaries of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

This paper explores dynamic processes of (re)negotiation of boundaries of and in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It identifies ambiguous temporal and spatial boundaries which create space for ongoing political and ideological contestation over the shape of the Belt and Road Initiative. The paper suggests that lack of clear geographical scope leaves open multiple futures for China’s global relations under the initiative. Chinese imaginaries hint at a world of transnational networks of political economy but one still structured by nation states and inter-governmental regional institutions at a time when the intertwining of the political and the economic is a feature of shifting configurations of global political economy.

Philosophical racism and ubuntu: In dialogue with Mogobe Ramose

This article discusses two complementary themes that play an important role in contemporary South African political philosophy: (1) the racist tradition in Western philosophy; and (2) the role of ubuntu in regaining an authentic African identity, which was systematically suppressed during the colonial past and apartheid. These are also leading themes in Mogobe Ramose’s African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. The first part concentrates on John Locke. It discusses the thesis that the reprehensible racism of many founders of liberal political philosophy has lethally infected liberal theory. This view neglects the distinction between genesis and justification. Political liberalism has since cleansed itself of the prejudices of its spiritual ancestors. Liberal human rights exclude racism as a matter of principle. The second part discusses the claim that the ubuntu philosophy provides a better basis for a constitution in a modern society than political liberalism. A major problem is that ubuntu is an essentially contested concept. Some philosophers consider ubuntu to be a moribund notion (Matolino); others see it as a vital concept par excellence. In the latter case, it is elaborated from sundry incompatible political views, ranging from African nationalism (Ramose) via humanist communitarianism (Metz) to liberalism (Mboti). Conclusion: as an essentially contested ideological concept, ubuntu should not be a decisive constitutional standard for the application of state force. In contrast, the constitutional model of political liberalism provides a reasonable alternative, as it is designed precisely to solve the problem of social plurality and ideological contest.

Parties to an alliance: Ideology and the domestic politics of international institutionalization

While much research has been done on the domestic determinants of alliance institutionalization, there has been a neglect of the effect of domestic politics, by which we mean contestation between political actors in the same country. We hypothesize that the ideology of the parties governing countries negotiating the terms of security relationships will affect their preferences over the degree and kind of institutionalization seen in alliances. Drawing on previous literature, we argue that rightist parties are more sensitive to sovereignty costs and will therefore insist on maintaining more control over policy than their leftist counterparts. They can assert control either by imposing hierarchical forms of institutionalization when they are a stronger party to an alliance or by avoiding institutionalization altogether if they are the weaker party in an alliance. In contrast, we expect leftist parties to be less sensitive to sovereignty costs and generally favorable to more voice-driven, egalitarian institutions that have institutionalized mechanisms for consensus-building, regardless of their country’s relative power position. Combining the ATOP dataset on alliance design with the Parties Manifesto Project, we find broad support for our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that scholars should pay more attention to the internal ideological contestation within countries, making room for domestic political factors that go beyond regime type.

Infrastructure in the Jungle: Infrastructure and Ideology in the Refugee Camps in Calais and Along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Abstract This article examines infrastructures as a tool for managing populations, specifically migrants and refugees, and more broadly, infrastructure as a communicative trope for social belonging and citizenship. Infrastructure emerges as a key site of ideological contestation. Refugees and their advocates argue that infrastructural breakdowns require greater investment of resources and social care. Opponents point to infrastructural breakdowns as evidence that refugees and migrants do not belong and are a drain on national resources. Through a comparative case study analysis of the refugee camp in Calais, France, and at the U.S.–Mexico border, this article argues that infrastructure and infrastructural breakdowns mediate and communicate claims to territory, political recognition, and legitimacy.

Cultivating the “Proletarian Outlook”: Towards a History of the Left in Central Australia, 1920–75

This article presents a history of left-wing ideas and activities in central Australia from the 1920s through to the 1970s. Although the central Australian region, and the Alice Springs district in particular, is now often associated with various Aboriginal rights struggles and other protest movements, little is known about the presence of left-wing influences prior to the 1970s. Working from archival sources, this paper begins to build up a picture of how leftists and, in particularly, those associated with the Communist Party of Australia struggled to make their presence felt in a predominantly conservative socio-economic milieu. The intent of this article is to sketch out the various historical figures, events and ideological contests that came to influence the political identity of Australia’s most isolated and scantily populated heartland over a number of decades. These vignettes also reveal how leftist politics did, and did not, have an effect on the Aboriginal rights campaigns that followed in the 1970s and onwards.

‘How to raise a curtain’: security, surveillance, and mobility in Canada’s Cold War-era exchanges, 1955–65

ABSTRACT An extensive literature on the cultural Cold War has shown that winning the hearts and minds of rival populations distinguished the conflict as an ideological contest. Yet the question of how ideology influenced the tracking of cross-bloc travellers in cultural and scientific exchanges remains largely unexplored. This article examines Canada’s ideological approach to screening and monitoring visitors from communist countries along with its covert interest in collecting foreign intelligence from visits to the Eastern bloc. By analysing declassified documents from Canada’s security service, this article argues that transnational surveillance allowed the Canadian government to imprint its own vision of Cold War mobility.

Errant Exceptionalism

Should LGBT-rights advocates analogize to race when wedding vendors seek religious exemptions from state public accommodation laws so that they may refuse service to same-sex couples? These wedding vendors concede that courts would reject their religious exemption claim when asserted to refuse serving a different-sex African-American couple. Should the analysis and outcome be the same for religious exemptions sought to refuse serving a same-sex couple? Both the ideological left and ideological right contest the use of the race analogy in these cases, although for largely different reasons. On the ideological right, today’s exemptions seekers bristle at the comparison to the vendors of the 1960s who sought to justify racial discrimination based on religious beliefs. They contend that the vendors of the 1960s were actually racists using religion as a cover for their bigotry. In contrast, today’s wedding vendors contend that they are asserting honorable and sincerely held religious beliefs that justify sexual orientation discrimination. On the ideological left, scholars contend that the race analogy is detrimental to coalition building among marginalized communities, that it leads to essentialism, and that it unduly constricts both the vision of civil rights and the agenda of the LGBT movement. This article tackles the opposition from both the ideological left and the right and makes the argument that LGBT-rights advocates should deploy the race analogy in the wedding vendor cases. In doing so, it adds to the scholarly dialogue about the propriety of the race analogy and contributes to that body of scholarship a taxonomy of the race analogy in the LGBT-rights movement. The race analogy in today’s wedding vendor cases is tantalizing to LGBT-rights advocates because the Court has — in the 1960s case of Piggie Park v. Newman — rejected a religious exemption claim in the context of racial discrimination. The analogy thus played a prominent role in the advocacy surrounding Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court left open the merits questions concerning religious exemptions. It also left unanswered the ancillary question of whether it will accept or reject the race analogy in these cases — an analogy that, if accepted by the Court, would have significant (if not dispositive) weight in resolving these cases against the wedding vendors. As the Court prepares to take up another religious exemption case in its October 2020 Term, the race analogy will again be raised, litigated, and debated. The article adds a new layer of scholarly dialogue to the race analogy debate by contending that its use in these cases is a constructive method of making legible the intersecting interests of marginalized groups in the marketplace as well as revealing the errant exceptionalism — the lack of doctrinal coherence — if the Court were to permit a religious exemption for one protected class (sexual orientation) but not another (race).

“Todas las poems que están creative”: Language Ideologies, Writing and Bilingual Children

ABSTRACT This research employs a language ideologies framework to examine the language practices and beliefs of bilingual first grade students in an ESL classroom, in which the teacher valued and encouraged Spanish and translingual talk and writing. Using ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis, the findings pointed to the influence of both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ideologies in children’s decisions about writing. These findings extend our knowledge of the process of ideological contestation to written as well as oral language, and highlights ways that teachers can provide support for bilingual writers and bilingual writing.