Political Aspirations Research Articles

‘Expression is power’: Gender, residual culture and political aspiration at the Cumnock School of Oratory, 1870–1900

AbstractThis article investigates the ways in which late‐nineteenth‐century students at Northwestern University's Cumnock School of Oratory mobilised elocution training and parlour performance to foster mixed‐gender public discourse. I use student publications to reconstruct parlour meetings in which women and men adapted traditions of conversational speech to allocate artistic and political participation equally across genders. Women expanded their expressive range and political aspirations, while men gained new understandings of manliness and women's rights. With the onset of muscular masculinity in the 1890s, oratory students reworked their performance culture into an act of campus resistance and a blueprint for social reform.

Abortion Rights Without Law: A Constitutional Reflection

Abortion rights in Canada seem both too small and too big for law, or perhaps we only think so because of how we think about law, which confirms the view that we are better off without it. Maybe then we should ask a different question: is there an abortion rights law to which we would say yes? Can we imagine a statutory scheme, or, more provocatively, a legislative package, with a radically reimagined role for the state and its power? Could law assemble the diverse experiences of abortion into something material rather than abstract? Could law create a care infrastructure to support people in all their reproductive decisions and throughout their reproductive lives: the right to end a pregnancy, the right to continue one, and the right to parent your child in a safe and healthy environment? Wouldn’t we say yes to a law that holds space for this political future? In Canada, this is no speculative imagination. Our Supreme Court accepts that constitutional futures can take shape in innovative laws that affirm and reach ahead to our political aspirations. We need only make them.

Political rhetoric vs practical reality of ‘Taking Back Control’: is the UK’s agri-food sector ready to break free from EU standards in the global arena?

ABSTRACT In the vortex of the Brexit discourse, the phrase ‘taking back control’ emerged as a resonant mantra, encapsulating a desire for enhanced sovereignty and self-direction. Despite its widespread usage and political importance, the phrase’s practical implications remain underexplored in academic literature. This study introduces a novel analytical framework that conceptualises the notion of taking back control as an outcome of de-Europeanisation and aims to analyse its practical implications. It uses two case studies, Pathogen Resistance Treatment (PRT) or ‘chlorinated chicken’ and neonicotinoid pesticide bans, to investigate the intricate interplay between political aspirations and economic realities in the UK’s attempt to diverge from EU standards. It reveals that the process of ‘taking back control’ is not a straightforward assertion of sovereignty but is mediated by complex negotiations that consider the trade-offs between regulatory autonomy, market access, and environmental and health standards. The findings underscore the persistent influence of the EU on the UK’s regulatory landscape and the strategic considerations that underpin the UK’s approach to de-Europeanisation. This study contributes to the broader discourse on Brexit by offering empirical insights into the practical challenges and opportunities that the UK faces as it redefines its regulatory standards in the global political economy.

Caste, gig-economy, and youth: the resurgence of a new age caste politics in urban Gujarat

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the connections between caste and gig economy, and how these connections play out in the political actions by youth in the erstwhile mill-neighbourhoods in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat. It asks, how do the gig-economy workers from the lower castes navigate in the highly caste segregated urban spaces of Ahmedabad? What drives them to join their own caste collectives while looking for gig work in the city? The article explains through ethnographic inquiries that while the recent emergence of the gig economy provides the young jobseekers from the lower castes an escape route from the caste-based occupations in the rural, their caste identities are strategically masked and highlighted in informing their choices, political aspirations and economic anxieties while navigating in the urban. The unpredictable and uncertain nature of the contractual work consolidates caste and kinship networks to get work and information about available work in the urban gig economy. This in turn facilitates a renewed political activism of the youth in the urban neighbourhoods that strengthens caste politics in the region.

“She Trafficked On Her Own Account”: Black Women’s Abolitionist Geographies in Robert Wedderburn’s Horrors of Slavery (1824) and History of Mary Prince (1831)

ABSTRACT Robert Wedderburn self-published Horrors of Slavery (1824) within ultraradical networks in London, so his life narrative was not shaped by the political ambitions of white, middle-class abolitionists. By celebrating the communal, place-based resistances of his enslaved mother and grandmother as the source of his own emancipation from slavery, Horrors reworked the Romantic figuration of sorrowful, enslaved Black mothers. Wedderburn’s mother, Rosanna, demanded that his enslaver father manumit him. His grandmother, Talkee Amy, was a higgler and obeah woman who “trafficked on her own account.” Wedderburn’s description of Rosanna and Talkee Amy’s place-based abolitionist geographies then serves as an illuminating intertext for History of Mary Prince (1831). Like Wedderburn’s mother and grandmother, Prince entered and navigated spaces in a way that asserted her humanness by rebelliously claiming kinship and higglering in unofficial local economies. In both narratives, Black women cultivated communal, material, and place-based forms of liberation from slavery, and their stories supplement and even challenge current understandings of Romantic-era abolition and women’s activism.

Arabic Language Implementation Viewed from A Social and Cultural Perspective at Maitreechit Withayattan School Bangkok

This research explores the implementation of Arabic language learning at the Maitreechit Withayattan School in Bangkok, Thailand. With a population dominated by a Muslim minority, this research aims to understand the challenges and potential for developing Arabic language education in this context. The research background reflects Thailand's uniqueness as an ASEAN country with a Muslim minority that is recognized and regulated by national law. The focus of the research is on issues of student interest, teaching methods, hidden learning goals, and the role of teachers in the learning process. The research method uses modern ethnographic studies at Maitrechit Wittaayathan School Bangkok. Research findings show that students' low interest is influenced by less innovative teaching methods and a need for more variety in learning. Hidden learning goals, which include students' political aspirations to support the position of Muslims in government, become a complex dynamic in Arabic language learning. The importance of Arabic in the government context was a significant finding, with students being taught that Arabic language skills can provide a competitive advantage in careers in the government sector. Despite challenges regarding student interest, school administrators' high enthusiasm for Arabic creates the potential for solid collaboration between education and religious identity development. Implications for Arabic language education management include the need for more exciting learning strategies, teacher training, and collaboration with external parties to increase the relevance of learning to careers. This research provides in-depth insight into the complex dynamics of Arabic language education in Muslim minority school environments in Thailand. However, it should be acknowledged that the research findings are limited to one school in Bangkok, and generalization of the findings must be done cautiously.

THE ROLE OF WEST LAMPUNG GENERAL ELECTION COMMISSION (KPU) IN FULFILLING THE POLITICAL RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES FROM THE SIYASAH TANFIDZIYAH PERSPECTIVE

The West Lampung Regency General Election Commission plays an important role in fulfilling the political rights of people with disabilities. Problems in fulfilling the political rights of disabilities include limited accessibility which makes it difficult for people with disabilities to participate in general elections or express other political aspirations. There are still many people with disabilities whose rights have not been fulfilled. This research uses qualitative research with the type of field research or field research. The data sources used are primary data sources and secondary data with data collection techniques using interviews, observation and documentation. The research results show that the role of the West Lampung Regency general election commission is in fulfilling the political rights of people with disabilities, such as making it easier to participate in general elections. West Lampung KPU provides accessibility according to the type of person with disabilities. The Role of the West Lampung Regency General Election Commission in Fulfilling the Political Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Siyasah Tanfidziyah's perspective has carried out its obligations as a general election implementing agency which is responsible for implementing and making efforts to fulfill the political rights of persons with disabilities.

Reasons and consequences of historical buildings and structures fragments' reuse

The article examines the peculiarities of the use of secondary raw materials in architectural and urban planning activities. The conducted research showed that the use of secondary raw materials is an established practice in architectural and urban planning activities. Surviving but no longer needed buildings and structures, their ruins, individual fragments of former architectural and urban planning objects, and construction materials extracted from them are subject to reuse. Pragmatic saving of time and materials is not the only reason for the integration of used elements in new buildings. Among the other conditionally positive driving motives of this practice: attempts to strengthen the political ambitions of modern powerful people, to draw symbolic parallels between different religions, to realize their own creative ambitions, to preserve the fragments of destroyed culture, and to perpetuate the collective memory of the inhabitants of certain territories. Unfortunately, the history of architecture preserves evidence that the re-use of architectural fragments can also be motivated by opposite, conditionally negative goals, such as contempt for the conquered state; contempt for another religion; superiority to the destroyed culture; fear of deposed but creepy mythical creatures; hatred of the persecuted people. The outlined motives determine the nature of behaviour with secondary raw materials and the result of its use. Respect and willingness to study lost objects of cultural heritage leads to the emergence of new interesting and meaningful architectural and urban planning solutions. Indifference, self-assertion, and aggression increase chaos and insensitivity to beauty and cause inappropriate project decisions, for which descendants are later ashamed. Because of the application of recycling practices in architectural and urban planning activities, historical buildings and structures do not lose their identity, acquiring a new symbolic meaning; turn into archaeological artefacts with an unknown past, or as depersonalized raw materials dissolve into newly created objects.

Language of Political Campaign: Unraveling the Linguistic Landscape in Billboard Advertisements

Billboard advertisements for legislative and senatorial campaigns are integral to the cityscape leading to the general elections, reflecting local political dynamics. This study examines the linguistic landscape in billboard advertisements for legislative and senator campaigns heading for the general election in Indonesia. A qualitative method was employed, gathering data from billboard advertisements across various city areas. Analysis was conducted on the language usage, stylistic features, word choice, sentence structure, and visual representations in these billboard advertisements. Findings indicate a variation in language usage, with standard Indonesian predominating but also a presence of local language mixtures. Stylistic features range from persuasive to informative, while word choice tends toward positively connotated terms. Sentence structures tend to be simple and direct, while visual representations emphasize the candidates and symbols reflecting political aspirations. These results depict candidates' complex communication strategies influencing voter opinions and attitudes. A profound understanding of this linguistic landscape is crucial for political observers and candidates to comprehend local political campaign dynamics and effective communication strategies. This study added a new dimension to understanding how political communication is manifested in public spaces. By focusing on billboards as an outdoor media, which often serves as a daily backdrop for many people, this study explores how language can effectively capture voters' attention and influence their political attitudes. Thus, this study is expected to significantly enrich the understanding of political linguistics and communication strategies in the context of election campaigns.

Leaders’ desires to lead: progressive ambition and norms around gender balance in the Swedish parliament

ABSTRACT While women citizens have less political ambition than similarly situated men across a wide range of contexts, we know less about gender differences in progressive ambition – elected politicians’ desire to achieve political leadership positions. This study analyzes leadership ambition among Swedish legislators. To understand the relationship between progressive ambition and the proportion of men and women in leadership positions, the political-institutional context is paramount. The gender-equal context of the Swedish Parliament allows us to investigate the relationship between progressive political ambition and informal rules, norms, and practices that promote the presence of women in political leadership. Drawing on interviews with nearly all top parliamentary leaders and party gatekeepers as well as a survey with MPs, we find that women leaders and MPs are less interested in political leadership in comparison to men. We describe the rules, norms, and practices that stipulate gender balance in decision-making in this context and show how gender-equitable informal institutions have contributed to creating gender balance in leadership. While such institutions have not closed the gender ambition gap at the individual level, they mitigate its consequences by incentivizing less ambitious women to accept leadership positions and prompting gatekeepers to search for and persuade competent women.

“A bloodless social revolution”: Land reform and multiple cropping in Cold War Taiwan, 1950–1979

Societal Impact StatementMultiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an important part of Taiwan's agricultural research from 1950 to 1970. This research originated in the context of Taiwan's land reform and diversification programs and their connections to the government's political ambition to maximize food production. The study of how multiple cropping was politicized and depoliticized by different actors helps to expand the narratives of the Green Revolution in Asia, analyze their legacies, and highlight Taiwan's role in the international exchange of visions of agricultural development during the Cold War.Summary Scholars have recently expanded the history of the Green Revolution to move beyond the narrative of North–South technological diffusion. This article enriches the scholarship with the case of multiple cropping in Taiwan and its connection to Cold War geopolitics. Rice productivity in postwar Taiwan was boosted through a land reform launched by the Sino‐American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) in the 1950s. Backed by American aid and staffed by scientists from the Republic of China (ROC) government, the JCRR envisioned to turn tenant farmers into landowners so as to encourage labor input and adoption of seeds and fertilizers. By 1960, the JCRR presented its reform as a “bloodless social revolution” and extended its focus to multiple cropping through a diversification program. The JCRR further created the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in 1971 to spread Taiwan's breeding and cropping techniques. The ROC's diplomatic isolation in the 1970s, however, prompted the center to reinterpret Taiwan's success in multiple cropping from a political achievement to a technological triumph, thus reinforcing the technology‐driven narrative used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Through Taiwan's influences on IRRI's rice breeding and multiple cropping research, this paper illustrates that the history of the Green Revolution requires more complex narratives. In addition, with Taiwan's political and economic transition since the 1980s, farmers began to reclaim their voice and influence agricultural policies. The case thus highlights the need of democratic participation in agricultural research, a concern that remains relevant today.

Secession, Right to Decide and the Constitutional Model of Militant Democracy

Advocating democracy and the right to decide over forceful union in the Spanish and European contexts, this paper makes modest theoretical proposals to protect the right to decide and to self-government of sub-state nations or peoples. The peaceful solution of conflicts involving contested claims over territory and national sovereignty calls for a pluralist concept of democracy, recovering the centrality of self-determination as the self-assertion of a people, a political community that has been systematically denied the freedom to decide on its own political status and aspiration. Constitutional law based on popular sovereignty often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured and axiomatic constituency. If the Constitution is further interpreted as precluding any claim to self-determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim then an undemocratic model of militant constitutionalism ensues. That militant scheme is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national model, a pre-defined demos. This contribution seeks to revisit the claim of sovereignty of the Catalan process and the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary precluding the Catalan Parliament from engaging in political debates on the right to decide, in relation to the issue of the militant democracy model

Complexities of State-Building in Somaliland

Abstracts Since the mid-2000s, state-building in Somaliland has emerged as a complex mixture of coexisting, competing programs, political aspirations, and foreign agendas. This article applies a dialectical approach to focus on the scalar relations among actors and models of capacity-building, from programs’ design to their implementation. Drawing on science and technology studies, I use the term “complexities” to describe the “multiplicities” of programs, actors, and different ways of ordering that coexist and overlap, sometimes in tension among them, other times in coordination. Specifically, this article examines two approaches to state-building in Somaliland: the United Nations Development Program’s institution-building and US Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded stabilization programs. Going beyond fixed binaries, such as international and local, homogenous and hybrid, state-building and state-formation, this article observes how these dichotomies are formed and how, rather than being separate, they combine together, generating techno-political arrangements. Somaliland’s complexity is made up of techno-political arrangements that are coproduced by both technical expertise and national political aspirations. Technical capacity-building programs, such as the redesign of the Somalia Institutional Development Project (SIDP), the creation of Somaliland’s National Development Plan (NDP), and the allocation of USAID’s grants, have become the terrain for political claims over the redistribution of resources and the control of state institutions.

Students’ and Governments’ Entanglements in Ghana’s Political Transition: How (Not) to Understand Students’ Relations with Civilian and Military Regimes, 1960–92

Abstract: Students’ relations with postindependence Ghanaian military regimes have generally been portrayed as positive, yet comparative analysis of the relational dynamics across regime types—military and civilian—is inadequate. This article addresses this knowledge gap using a historical content analytic approach based on original archival and interview data. We argue that strategic and group interests ambiguously influenced students’ entanglement with military and civilian governments, though revolutions initially attracted more support because of their populist political ideologies and development aspirations. This fluctuating pattern of relations, which birthed Ghana’s Fourth Republic, implies that students were concerned mainly with national development beyond ideologically oriented regime leanings. The article thus modifies the predominant scholarly view of African youth, which holds that students have aided or been predisposed to nondemocratic governance and political instability.

Chatham House of Interest and the Discourse of Globalised Political Expressions in Peter Obi’s 2023 Pre-election Speech

Chatham House, for the reason of its royalty, institutionalism and independence, has become a global beehive and platform where, especially Nigerian political actors articulate their ambitions and policies and prove the mettle of their deservedness for the nation’s helmsman’s job. Extant political discourse studies have largely examined conventional campaign speech-situations with stint considerations for political expressions offered on the postmodern globalised campaign platforms. This study, therefore, investigated Peter Obi’s Chatham House speech (POCHS) with a view to examining the contextually referenced discursive strategies that project Nigerian presidential candidacy as more of offshore interest in the twenty-first century global politics. Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory was used as the framework in analysing the elemental linguistic and non-linguistic strategies deployed in the electronically sourced POCHS. The data, processed into analysable extract-units, were subjected to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Mr. Peter Obi’s (PO) unusual employment of attitude-demonstrated ‘affect’, ‘appreciation’ and ‘judgement’ was unique in relating his global audience to virtues and attributes that qualify him for the Nigerian topmost position, presenting him as an unconventional politician. Positive and negative appreciation and judgements were used for personal-self-evaluation, corporate-self-evaluation, ‘others-self-evaluation’, and nation-self-evaluation while the bases for appreciation and judgement were personal and party competence, problems, policy gaps and solutions. PO deployed engagement as monogloss and heterrogloss on top of ‘graduation’ with intensifiers and quantifiers as force that projected ‘focus’, ‘emphasis’ and ‘analogies’. Thus, globalised political context influenced PO’s exploitation of the rarely available global platforms (Chatham House) to articulate his political ambition and manifesto. Language is, therefore, revealed as dynamic force for presentation and evaluation of persons, problems, policies and panaceas that are capable of endearing him to the expectation of the audience at Chatham House, pointing to Nigerian presidency as a phenomenon of 21st century’s global interest.

‘Sovereignty is still the name of the game’: Indigenous theorising and strategic entanglement in Māori political discourses

Abstract In recent decades, sovereignty has come under increased academic scrutiny for being a Eurocentric notion antithetical to emancipatory politics, leading critical theory scholars to call for an overcoming or even abandonment of the concept. Paradoxical as it may seem, it nonetheless remains an appealing ideal for many colonised peoples. Indigenous activists and scholars have actively re-appropriated the language of sovereignty to encapsulate and advance Indigenous political aspirations. This paper discusses how Māori, Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Indigenous people, navigate their relations to the concept in their contemporary political discourses pursuing self-governance. Building on interviews with Māori leaders, scholars, and activists, it offers empirical insights into Indigenous political thought’s engagement with the idea of sovereignty. It highlights an ambivalence oscillating between rejection and rearticulation present both in Indigenous theorising and Māori politics. From an analysis of Māori contemporary conceptual strategies, this paper suggests that Yarimar Bonilla’s notion of ‘strategic entanglement’ offers a productive account to comprehend the approached Māori actors’ deployment of the sovereignty concept, and possibly that of Indigenous peoples beyond Aotearoa. This paper thus highlights the continued relevance of the sovereignty framework, both analytically and politically, to meaningfully engage with contemporary Indigenous politics.

Limited supply: Youth underrepresentation in the Canadian House of Commons

Much of the research on youth representation focuses on the final stage of electoral recruitment: young peoples' presence in legislatures. We expand this scope using a supply and demand framework to document the representation of young people not only in parliament but also in the candidate stage that proceeds it. Drawing on an extensive dataset of more than 3000 candidates in Canadian federal elections from 2008 to 2021, we show that young peoples’ numerical underrepresentation is not primarily a function of voter discrimination but rather a result of the small number of young candidates who come forward. We find that limited youth representation in the candidate pool translates into low representation rates in parliament. These results suggest that efforts to ameliorate youth underrepresentation in politics must be attentive to supply-side issues, including party gatekeeping, resource constraints, political ambition, and the motivations for running for office.

Cognition and Intelligence After the Post-Human Turn Insights from the Brain-Gut Axis

This article discusses how the post‑human turn in science and society is framing cognition, mind and intelligence taking as empirical case the gut‑brain axis developed within microbiome science. The article brings into dialogue authors from different disciplines that deal with the relationship between cognition and posthumanism, with the aim to indicate posthumanism’s potential but also to warn about the risk of its – more or less conscious – engulfment into a neoliberal framework. Bringing into dialogue an ontoepistemic and a sociopolitical analysis – debates that are too often kept separated – the article indicates that the ‘becoming environmental’ of cognition, mind and intelligence, far from simply being a dehumanizing gesture that causes anthropocentrism to crumble, is still a very human endeavour, deeply rooted in human history and its varied desires and political aspirations.

Pidgins and Creoles: Analysis of The Etymology, Relevant Theories and The Influence of Media

Being a common phenomenon, bilingualism occurs when a person acquires two languages. Bilingualism can take place for commercial, political, and educational purposes. Educational purposes aside, the unwavering commercial and political ambitions of bigger civilizations coerced them to colonize smaller civilizations. For this reason, they imposed their languages on the colonized local people. Locals responded to the demands of colonizers by forming their languages called pidgin. As this common language evolved and became the native language of the contiguous generation, the language improved following its linguistic features, that is, creolized. Several theories regarding their origin exist in the literature. Thus; the present review aims to examine and explain these theories concerning their historical background and framework and mention the influence of media on pidgins and creoles appealing to antecedent studies in the relevant literature. Based on the systematic review of different studies, the present review concludes that pidgins and creoles are not inaccurate versions of standard languages, but separate languages worthy of studying. Besides, the theories of pidgin and creole origins are all useful guidelines that require holistic analysis because of their interconnectedness. Theories of polygenesis and monogenesis present this integrity complying with Stammbaum (1871) and Wellentheorie (1872). When it comes to the influence of the media, the present review concludes that mediatic tools, such as television, the Internet, and mobile phones, along with literature and music, enable locals to demonstrate their identity, but may sometimes lead to cyberbullying and illegal acts.

A climate report gone missing – power mechanisms in Swedish national transport planning

ABSTRACT While the technological development of vehicles and fuels is not adequate to meet current climate mitigation targets, infrastructure development also plays an important role in transforming the transport system. Previous studies have argued that conventional infrastructure planning is incapable of implementing climate mitigation. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into power means and mechanisms that counteract integration of climate mitigation targets in infrastructure planning. This is done by an in-depth case study of current Swedish national transport planning. This case provides a rich illustration of a situation with high political ambitions regarding climate mitigation on the one hand, and power mechanisms and resistance with regard to climate goals during the planning process on the other. The case is analysed using the perspective of power circuits and shows how forecasting works as an obligatory passage point, sorting in and out which analyses will be part of the decision-making material. Analyses which do not fit the forecasting model are dismissed from planning. The conclusion is that as long as the transport infrastructure planning practice is dependent on forecasting as the only central analysis there will be difficulties in changing the scope of infrastructure planning and making climate goals central for transport planning.