Ideological Divisions Research Articles

Antifa without fascism: the reasons behind the anti-fascist movement in Ireland

ABSTRACTThe anti-fascist movement is generally viewed as a reaction to the extreme right by concerned left-wing activists. Therefore we would not expect the Antifa to feature in countries where extreme right activism is not a feature of the politics. However, Ireland has no significant extreme right but it still has an anti-fascist movement that plays an influential role within radical left circles. By treating Ireland as an outlier in relation to the existing reactive explanation for anti-fascist mobilisation this paper takes a deviant case analysis approach to generate novel hypotheses behind the reasons for the anti-fascist movement. First, anti-fascism acts as a site of left convergence, an area of unity that transcends the usual ideological divisions that can impede other types of political collaboration in a fragmented radical left activist base. Second, in the absence of effective extreme right forces, anti-fascism acts as a form of prophylactic action. In effect, the aim of this activism is to deny political space to extreme right micro groups before they become a popular force or a more serious political threat. Finally, a close cultural lineage between elements within the left and a past revolutionary tradition will increase the appeal of anti-fascist activism among left-wing activists.

Крымский вопрос и позиция Франции: критический дискурс французских элит

De jure recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia’s territory is not on the agenda of political discussions in France. Or, a noticeable part of French society, including its elite groups, does not share the vision of Ukrainian and Crimean events built on anti-Russian postulates. The Euro-Atlantic policy, greatly endorsed by the official leadership of the country and its dominant elites, invites skepticism and criticism not only within business environment, but also from French political, diplomatic, military and expert circles. Moreover, controversy on these issues highlights a new ideological division that is pushing back the classic left-right cleavage.

Russia’s electoral landscape: yesterday, today, tomorrow

In the collective monograph “Election in the context of Crimea: the 2016-2018 election cycle and prospects for a political transition”, edited by V. Fyodorov, experts from the Russia Public Opinion Research Center analyze the evolution of Russian people’s political behavior during the years 2016-2018, while revealing the prospects and risks for subsequent election cycles. Major sociological evaluations of the latest electoral campaigns served as a basis for analyzing the electoral landscape. The authors note that elections in Russia are held under a political system with limited competition, which doesn’t create any possibility for an array of alternative choices. Sociological studies show that all of the latest election cycles in Russia were conducted in the typical spirit of Weber’s plebiscitary democracy, while the main source of public trust in society is the political leader’s personality, legitimized in a paternalistic fashion. Russian people do not consider elections within the logic of rational behavior and usefulness, or personal benefit and potential gains for the country as a whole. In public consciousness overcoming economic issues is not linked to developing democratic institutions. Most people distrust the opposition, made apparent by the failed election boycott proposed by the non-system opposition, by meager signal voting etc. This collective monograph highlights the basic foundations for a “post-Crimea consensus” – rallying around a strong leader figure, intensifying patriotic attitudes within the context of returning the Crimea and in the face of western sanctions. While studying mass consciousness, the authors highlight an “intermediate” state of the value environment, which is characterized by ideological divides and separations, the main of which divides the conservative majority and the liberal minority. Such ambiguity in the realm of values provides equal grounds for stating that we are dealing with both a “post-Crimea consensus” and a “post-Crimea divide”. The “post-Crimea consensus” served not only as a means of consolidation, but also as a means of isolation and exclusion. The monograph also considers the emotional component’s effect on electoral choice. The book pays careful attention to issues with political forecasting, as well as techniques and methods used in political forecasting, which allows for highlighting the subsequent course and trends in electoral processes.

The Many Lives of Raleigh’s Ghost: Reframing Atheism and the Afterlife in Early Stuart Britain

overt admission that the name and fame of Sir Walter Raleigh are being used as an editorial foil to attract readers and sell copy will be my leading thread here. The key to understanding this strikingly English reframing of Lessius’s treatise ... is thus to situate it as part of the Jesuit activities of production and clandestine dissemination of translations for the spiritual “profit” of English recusants, and also in regards to other instances of exploitation of Raleigh’s enduring fame in contemporary translations and other “feigned apparitions.” In so doing, I shall explore the various “time-warps,” intertextual loops, visual tricks, and other manipulative devices that enable the translation of this famous ghost, through the circles of heaven or hell, and across material forms, ideological divides, and language barriers (real or imaginary), to seventeenth-century English readers.

Rodna ideologija u diskursu mladih

While gender order is defined as a social system of divisions based on gender-class rules, tasks, obligations, freedoms and limits (Eckert&McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 34), gender ideology is defined as a cluster of beliefs that manages the participation of people in gender order (Eckert&McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 26). Gender stereotypes that have an influence on the creation of gender ideologies can also have an immense influence on the communicative approach of both speakers and interlocutors (Eckert, McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 197). Therefore, this paper defines the impact of gender ideology on language usage, with specific reference to the discourse of the youth. Having in mind that gender division is involved, the paper analyses the usage of gender sensitive language. After the theoretical introduction to gender ideology and the division of egalitarian and traditional gender ideology, the paper also includes a research regarding the usage of gender sensitive language in the discourse of the youth, based on their gender ideology. The paper confirms the main hypothesis that those students who cherish traditional gender ideology do not use gender sensitive language, while those students who cherish egalitarian gender ideology use gender sensitive language in everyday communication.

Undoing Difference: Academic Historians and the Downton Abbey Audience

A number of proposals have been put forward in recent years by historians in both the British and American academies for increasing the audience for academic history. In part this is due to the significant reduction in support for history programmes in both countries since the 2008 financial crisis. Absent from those proposals, however, is a call to use the popular interest generated by programmes such as Downton Abbey to foster an appreciation for academic history outside the university. Drawing on theories of fan culture developed within media and cultural studies, this article argues for the compatibility of academic history and communities created by fans. It discusses my experience of using Downton Abbey to lecture on the pre-First World War British voting system, utilising the biographies of the show's characters to demonstrate the ways in which British voting was far more restricted in practice than it seemed. The article argues that even those committed to the most traditional forms of academic history can take advantage of opportunities presented by shows like Downton Abbey. It then explores the connections between this method of public engagement and Judith Butler's arguments in Undoing Gender, which examine how conditions for recognition and communication across ideological and cultural divisions can be created.

Power Relations in the Force Field of Academia: A Close Reading of Srividya Natarajan’s No Onions Nor Garlic

University campuses serve as second homes for students, teachers, administrators, and parents coming from diverse regions, religions, classes, castes, and different genders. Interaction and camaraderie between the major characters in the academe develop. The bonhomie that exists between the stakeholders of the academe has its own rules, rules that are marked by the interference of power. The one wielding more power by virtue of one’s position, class, caste, or gender tries to dictate the terms of a particular relationship. Relations evolve as power relations, whereby a specific code of conduct regarding speech, behavior, thought, writing, love, and life is laid down for all—from administrators and professors to students and parents. This article studies how in a location as specific as Chennai University as described in Srividya Natarajan’s No Onions Nor Garlic, the ideological prejudices and hierarchical divisions highlighted by the play of power affect the daily life of the academe and chart out the course of action for everyone, from professors, students, high caste, low caste to men and women, involved in power relations. On the basis of that, this article suggests power in general serves not only to suppress the powerless but is productive also, as countering power with power creates a proper kind of resistance that blurs the difference between the agent and the target of power in power relations.

Why Keep Arguing? Predicting Engagement in Political Conversations Online

Individuals acquire increasingly more of their political information from social media, and ever more of that online time is spent in interpersonal, peer-to-peer communication and conversation. Yet, many of these conversations can be either acrimoniously unpleasant or pleasantly uninformative. Why do we seek out and engage in these interactions? Who do people choose to argue with, and what brings them back to repeated exchanges? In short, why do people bother arguing online? We develop a model of argument engagement using a new dataset of Twitter conversations about President Trump. The model incorporates numerous user, tweet, and thread-level features to predict user participation in conversations with over 98% accuracy. We find that users are likely to argue over wide ideological divides, and are increasingly likely to engage with those who are different from themselves. In addition, we find that the emotional content of a tweet has important implications for user engagement, with negative and unpleasant tweets more likely to spark sustained participation. Although often negative, these extended discussions can bridge political differences and reduce information bubbles. This suggests a public appetite for engaging in prolonged political discussions that are more than just partisan potshots or trolling, and our results suggest a variety of strategies for extending and enriching these interactions.

The national library sphere during the World War I. On the occasion of the 100-th anniversary of Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the end of the WWI

The author discusses the history of librarianship inRussiain 1914-1918 that is poorly investigated. The activities of pro-government and illegal libraries of various political parties are examined. The examples of the agitation-and-propaganda literature for the militaries are given. The conditions for distributing illegal library literature among the front-line troops are revealed. The libraries for the Russian prisoners of war in the German and Austro-Hungarian camps were organized. Precious library collections were deported fromRussiaunder the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Methods and vectors of the activities of illegal and semi-legal libraries behind the lines are also examined. The author proves that these libraries were in fact the revolutionaries’ pivot: there the meetings and gatherings were held; the revolutionaries used the library premises as safe houses. The weak top bureaucracy was unable to confront the revolutionary forces, in particular by the library laws. The author emphasizes that the ideological division within the Russian society was growing, strata and classes were splitting. The conditions for ideological defeat ofRussiain the World War I are analyzed.

The geographic evolution of political cleavages in Switzerland: A network approach to assessing levels and dynamics of polarization between local populations.

Scholarly studies and common accounts of national politics enjoy pointing out the resilience of ideological divides among populations. Building on the image of political cleavages and geographic polarization, the regionalization of politics has become a truism across Northern democracies. Left unquestioned, this geography plays a central role in shaping electoral and referendum campaigns. In Europe and North America, observers identify recurring patterns dividing local populations during national votes. While much research describes those patterns in relation to ethnicity, religious affiliation, historic legacy and party affiliation, current approaches in political research lack the capacity to measure their evolution over time or other vote subsets. This article introduces “Dyadic Agreement Modeling” (DyAM), a transdisciplinary method to assess the evolution of geographic cleavages in vote outcomes by implementing a metric of agreement/disagreement through Network Analysis. Unlike existing approaches, DyAM offers a stable measure for political agreement and disagreement—accounting for chance, statistically robust and remaining structurally independent from the number of entries and missing data. The method opens up to a range of statistical, structural and visual tools specific to Network Analysis and its usage across disciplines. In order to illustrate DyAM, I use more than 680,000 municipal outcomes from Swiss federal popular votes and assess the evolution of political cleavages across local populations since 1981. Results suggest that political congruence between Swiss local populations increased in the last forty years, while regional political factions and linguistic alignments have lost their salience to new divides. I discuss how choices about input parameters and data subsets nuance findings, and consider confounding factors that may influence conclusions over the dynamic equilibrium of national politics and the strengthening effect of globalization on democratic institutions.

Influential News: Impact of Print Media Reports on the Fulfillment of Election Promises

Building on the mandate theory of democracy and literature on media coverage of elections, this article theorizes why information regarding party promises that is transmitted through the media could affect the former’s fulfillment. Utilizing a unique data set composed of 2,676 promises issued by 14 legislative parties over a 15-year period in post-communist Bulgaria, the study is among the first to longitudinally analyze the role of media in pledge fulfillment, while controlling for institutional and other explanations. The conclusions demonstrate that media reporting of election promises affects the fulfillment of pledges made by coalition parties, when more than one outlet has printed a promise, and under conditions of strong ideological divisions within the cabinet. Furthermore, the impact of media reporting is greater for pledges that do not otherwise have a high likelihood of being fulfilled.

Terrains of Civil and Uncivil Society in Post-Apartheid Durban

Post-apartheid Durban civil society politics reflects not only durable anti-racist activism, but primarily, Karl Polanyi’s pendulum of a ‘double movement’ of the market against people and environment on the one hand, and social backlashes against neoliberalism on the other. The most important movements and campaigns of a socioeconomic nature can be summarised as follows: local resistance to economic disempowerment and lack of service delivery in various trade union strikes (1994–present), South Durban’s fight against polluters and the port’s expansion (1996–present), Chatsworth’s water and electricity battles (1999–2012), the Treatment Action Campaign’s access to AIDS medicines (early 2000s), Abahlali baseMjondolo’s anti-eviction campaigns (2005–present), the defence of the Early Morning Market (2009–10), the Umlazi Occupy (2012), and sporadic community protests throughout. Resistance has occurred in urban poor neighbourhoods and townships and also penetrated the Durban inner city and university campuses. Durban activists’ tactics range from militant protests to ‘occupation’ of space ranging from townships to the Speaker’s Corner next to the Convention Centre, innovative door-to-door campaigning and court action. While the limits of single-issue and often assimilationist civil society politics are becoming obvious in one of the world’s most unequal cities, there still has not yet been a successful ‘united front’ project to fuse interests, in part due to ideological division and the geographical diffusion of dissent.

„Jak to się stało, że masz syna z nowym Bondem?” – kobiece, męskie i boskie w poezji Justyny Bargielskiej

The paper applies to the work of one of the most important Polish writers of the last decade. Bargielska combines bold poetic experiments with a keen testimony of an ordinary life of a young woman, who experiences life in the beginning of the 21st century in Poland. On the one hand, the poet declares a conservative worldview (her value system is based on the “trinity”: Catholicism, heterosexuality, motherhood), on the other hand, she brutally and mercilessly uncovers the subjugation of a woman in the world of a male-dominated language. Her writing deconstructs this system, as it discovers the literature as a space for the practice of personal freedom beyond the slogans and ideological divisions; she manages to create her own independent form of existence. The poet renews feminine way of being through the deconstruction of religious myths and cultural stereotypes, confronted with the physiological and social reality.

The changing political impact of compassion-evoking pictures: the case of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi

ABSTRACTCompassion-evoking and widely circulated news images seem capable of affecting public opinion and change history. A case in point is the picture of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi, who died while trying to escape to Europe with his family in September 2015. We theorise how these types of photos affect public opinion. By relying on panel data with sequentially embedded survey experiments conducted in the aftermath of the picture’s publication and while large numbers of refugees were coming to Europe, we demonstrate that the image of Alan Kurdi had context-varying effects on policy preferences. Initially, the upsetting photo of the toddler increased support for liberal refugee policies across ideological divides. However, when individuals had the time to think about policy implications, they started processing even this highly upsetting picture through their ideology. Consequently, our results indicate that compassion-evoking images shift meaning over time.

Ideological Affiliations, Conflicts, and Competing Mobilization Frames: The Role of Pro-immigrant Allies in Shaping Immigrant Struggles for Greater Rights

This article critically assesses the role pro-immigrant allies play in shaping immigrant struggles for their greater rights. Drawing from original data collected in Italy between 2013 and 2014, it analyzes the conflict-laden organization of “A Day without Us,” a mass mobilization that took place in Italy on March 1, 2010. It explains how ideological divides, competing mobilization frames, and struggles for legitimacy among pro-immigrant groups play a key role in influencing mobilization strategies and outcomes, as do the mechanisms of marginalization of immigrant activists. This study improves understandings of immigrant political mobilization as it shows the ways in which pro-immigrant groups may reduce the scope and effectiveness of immigrants’ rights claims in receiving societies.

Defending the Liberal Revolution in France: Provincial Reactions to the Parisian journée of 20 June 1792

On 20 June 1792 popular militants from the Paris Sections marched in arms to the Legislative Assembly where they demanded that the deputies constrain or remove the king. The crowds then invaded the Tuileries palace to intimidate Louis XVI directly. While forced to don the red cap of the Sans-Culottes, the king made no concessions to the demonstrators. Historians of the French Revolution have interpreted this episode as a step toward the insurrection of 10 August 1792 which overthrew the monarchy. While acknowledging that the journée of 20 June provoked protests throughout France, both Marxists and revisionists have construed these as expressions of royalism and minimized their importance. Yet the provincial reactions provide evidence of a more subtle division in the country as the revolution shifted to a more radical phase. This article examines the petitions and addresses that were sent from the departments to the Legislative Assembly to protest the events of 20 June 1792 in Paris. While these texts denounced the outrages committed against the king, they went beyond manifestations of loyalty to express commitment to the ideal of constitutionalism. Some addresses reflected local conflict between administrators and popular revolutionaries. Not all protests against the events in Paris were sent by wealthy bourgeoisie, however, and the petitions provide evidence of a political and ideological division beyond class conflict. The provincial reactions to 20 June 1792 suggest that many in France still hoped to defend the liberal revolution with its promise of individual liberty, property rights, and the rule of law, and to identify national sovereignty with the decisions of an elected legislature under a constitution rather than direct manifestations of popular will, on the eve of a second revolution, which would sweep away the Constitution of 1791.

Planning as State-Effect: Calculation, Historicity and Imagination at Marina Bay, Singapore

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how planning practices contribute to the reification of the ‘state’ through the case of Singapore’s new urban waterfront, Marina Bay. Instead of assuming Singapore’s state-led planning model as inherently ‘top-down’ and ‘long-term’, it disaggregates the planning process into three specific modes of abstraction – calculation, historicity and imagination – and analyzes the role of each in reifying the ‘state’ as the singular author of history and development. The case contributes to the literature by illuminating how ‘states’ can appear to have different forms, spatialities, agencies and ultimately consequences, without compartmentalizing planning models based primarily on ideological or geopolitical divisions.

What Made Reading Dangerous in Eighteenth-Century France?

Abstract This article approaches reading by comparing the views of police officers and physicians in eighteenth-century France. Both had a vested interest in readers as part of their professional duties. Contrary to expectations, anxiety about reading cut across the ideological divisions of the Enlightenment. When we situate the police perspective on the dangers of reading in this broader conversation, we see their repressive activities in a new light. What distinguished their views from those of doctors, who targeted reading as a public health problem for medical intervention, was not their conviction that reading required regulation but their understanding of fiction and its effects. The police located the dangers of reading outside the text, not inside it. Reading fueled conversations, speculations, and the production of more texts. By contrast, the doctors warned about the absorptive powers of fiction and moved the danger zone inside the individual's imagination. This analysis suggests that attitudes toward reading revealed doubts about the human capacity for self-government that guided both royal officials and men of science in their diagnosis of social life.

Expectations and the issue of land in South Africa – the historical origins and current debate

Land remains a contentious political issue that has the potential for further conflict in South Africa. Expectations over land are a legitimate result of a history of dispossession, displacement and deprivation during the pre-colonial, colonial and Apartheid eras. The importance of placing discussions on land within a historical context is salient. Legitimate perceptions around the slow pace of sustainable land reform since 1994 have left a vacuum for politicians to continue to use the land issue as tool for political mobilisation. However, development programmes that are meant to deliver on the expectations such as the National Development Plan (NDP) and the New Growth Path (NGP) are often undermined by the same politicians. The ideological divisions between the NDR and the NDP/NGP within the ruling African National Congress-run (ANC) government hamper progress towards achieving the land redistribution objectives outlined in these development plans and programmes. The dilemma that this creates is that factors required to mitigate this problem such as an emphasis on sustainability of redistributed land for increased food security have fallen victim to this ideological tug-of-war. The widening gap between the politically fuelled expectations trajectory on the one hand, and the inability to meet these expectations by current development programmes on the other, are sources of increasing social conflict in society.

Othering mechanisms among political opposition on Twitter during the 2017 Mexico state elections

El presente trabajo reporta los resultados de un análisis de contenido cualitativo realizado a una muestra de 11.576 tweets de simpatizantes ciudadanos de los partidos y candidatos de oposición durante el período electoral de 2017, partiendo de la discusión de candidatos a la gubernatura de Coahuila. El objetivo de dicho análisis fue identificar los mecanismos de otrificación empleados para la construcción de opositores binarios a la propia identidad política entre los ciudadanos, a la luz del recrudecimiento y polarización de las divisiones ideológicas en la esfera pública nacional e internacional, tanto en línea como en el espacio físico. El estudio encontró que los simpatizantes de izquierda tienden a deshumanizar a aquellos que enuncian opiniones diferentes, caracterizándolos como conspiradores en plurales arbitrarios como «la Mafia del Poder», y que los simpatizantes de derecha hacen extenso uso del desdén como mecanismo de otrificación. Se concluye que ambas prácticas son contraproducentes y altamente dañinas para la construcción de diálogo ciudadano y de la esfera pública del país, y que contribuyen a una concepción de los procesos democráticos, no como una búsqueda del mejor sistema de gobierno para el bien común, sino como un juego de suma cero en el cual no hay nada más importante que la derrota del bando opuesto.