Political Assertion Research Articles

L’anglais d’Afrique du Sud : indigénisation et affirmation politique. Le cas du Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles

Le Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (DSAEHP) entendait à sa parution en 1996 refléter la réalité linguistique de l’anglais en Afrique du Sud, langue de contact non majoritaire peu utilisée comme langue première. Tout comme l’anglais était lié à la lutte antiapartheid et devint indispensable au sortir des années d’oppression comme lingua franca des élites politiques, ce dictionnaire, élaboré à l’université Rhodes à Grahamstown, foyer progressiste anglophone, est associé à la posture antiapartheid caractéristique des intellectuels libéraux anglophones locaux et devait contribuer à construire le nouveau modèle démocratique. Le présent article s’interroge sur la place de ce dictionnaire, objet historiquement constitué, dans la lexicographie sud-africaine, sur le rendu du contenu lexical spécifique de l’anglais sud-africain qu’il opère, et sur la vision du monde particulière qu’il offre en tant qu’outil de construction symbolique reflétant les aspirations et présupposés de ses auteurs.

The Paradox of Scottish Political Culture

Scottish political culture adhered to a form of universalism from the Enlightenment until quite recently. In that sense, it denied its own distinctiveness, asserting as part of the very definition of the nation that national distinctiveness ought to be subsumed into liberal principles that are applicable everywhere and at all times. These universalistic ideas changed as society changed, and became more truly universal with the advent of universal democracy and the end of Empire. They are one reason why Scotland remained attached to the British union, and indeed Britain itself came to embody the concept of universalism from the middle of the eighteenth century until well after the middle of the twentieth. Recent Scottish political assertion has, however, moved away from this self-confident universalism. The article discusses the implications for the current debate about Scottish independence of both the longer history and the recent change.

Democracy Against Development: Lower Caste Politics, and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India by Jeffrey Witsoe (review)

Jeffrey Witsoe, Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics, and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. 256 pp.Jeffrey Witsoe's Democracy Against Development takes on the task of investigating as a determinative force in postcolonial Indian democracy. On one level, this appears a familiar project. Several others- concerned variously with colonial histories, enumerative representational practices, identitarian politics, and contemporary socio-political upheavals- have elaborated on as a contingent, variable, but nonetheless enduring dynamic of Indian governance (Bayly 1999; Dirks 1993, 2001; Reddy 2005). Such works establish the irrefutable modernity of caste: its constitution as a unified system through colonial governance and its consequent disassociation from politics and alliance with ritual and religion- which ironically provides rationalization for later political assertions demanding access to resources, representation, and rights. Caste becomes thus a powerful organizing element of contemporary Indian democracy, a specifically postcolonial version of political society (Dirks 2001:16). So vital are groups to contemporary electoral practice, and so unapologetically self-interested are their emergent political methods, that in analysis, too, it has become commonplace to reference metrics and mechanics (playing the caste card, considering the caste equation) as indicators of interest-driven politics-as-usual, all enacted at the expense of the rationalist, liberal Indian state. The scene is one of complete disarray: violence, corruption, electoral malpractice, and dispersed personal and group interests driving politics. It is at this juncture of analytical break-down, however, that Witsoe's contribution must be located. He poses a simple but crucial question: could there be more to the story of lower-caste mobilization than straightforward political manipulation and inevitable state failure?The book is structured around the work of parsing this single possibility. What is at stake is nothing more or less than the framework by which understand the processes of democratic state-formation in India. Witsoe takes the case of Bihar, which most commentators point to as among the most underdeveloped and backward of Indian states, driven by abrasive lower-caste politics, and the site of brazen electoral misconduct, violence, and crippling corruption: a clear example of a failed state. However, such an assessment, Witsoe shows, reflects a normative liberal reading of democracy which abstracts identities, individualizes rights, and relies on regulated, rational procedures-all in a context in which identities cannot be abstracted from local structures of dominance and subordination, entrenched inequalities complicate questions of rights, and rational democratic process appears either embattled or unsuited to coping with electorates less concerned with policy than with seizing power. Therefore, Witsoe suggests, rather than pronouncing the inherently illiberal character of Indian democracy, switch the frame-and the Bihar case starts not only to make better sense, but to teach us invaluable lessons about just how Indian electoral processes constitute distinctive modes of postcolonial democratic governance.Witsoe's alternative framework for understanding politics in Bihar begins with the notion of popular (as opposed to individual freedom): in practice, the rule of hitherto unrepresented and disempowered groups (or alliances of groups), determined by electoral process. Popular sovereignty stems from the experience of local power: everyday inequalities and routine violations structured by interactions with state institutions which, created under colonial auspices and never fundamentally overhauled, ensure that rights exist only in theory or well beyond local contexts. The result is a state overwhelmingly controlled by upper castes whose promise of social upliftvia remains undelivered, a rejection of the paradigm-Witsoe quotes a slogan, we need dignity, not development (19)-and an interpretation of democracy as the rule of lower-caste majorities, actualized by sheer electoral force. …

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Dianne Ashton From time to time, scholarly journals may depart from their standard format of presenting articles involving new research in order to focus their attention on new methodologies, questions or debates currently animating their field.1 This issue of American Jewish History follows that route. Our contributors each participated in a roundtable at the 2012 Scholars Conference sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History in New York, where they discussed how our field has informed their work as social scientists. Focused on the theme “Beyond Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying American Jews” the conference brought together a broad range of scholars engaged in studying American Jewry, and it produced an intellectually exciting event. We are fortunate that the participants in the conference roundtable, Ethnographers and History, created a written version of their discussion to share with AJH readers. We begin with the thoughts of Riv-Ellen Prell, who chaired the roundtable. She explains that while the panel members—herself included—“hail from different disciplines: anthropology, folklore, sociology, and linguistics,” they share an “abiding interest in grounding [their] . . . studies in their deep and complex historical roots.” She helps us to understand the history of social scientists’ interest in interdisciplinary work with history and also the particular usefulness of this kind of work to those engaged in Jewish studies. Ayala Fader, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, explains how important the knowledge of historical context is to her own research into the lives of Orthodox and Hasidic girls in Brooklyn and also into the Occupy Wall Street movement. Fader has found a fruitful way of bringing together historical knowledge and research conducted largely by observing her subjects and paying close attention to their historical memories. Fader also observes ongoing changes in the historical contexts of both of the groups she studies, as well as to such changes in her own life. As she notes, “Histories—the unwritten, the remembered and the more authoritative—are critical for understanding the dynamics of social reproduction and change.” Chava Weissler, a folklorist, studies “the expressive culture—rituals, prayers, music and crafts—of ordinary . . . Jews.” Her work has encompassed the study of twentieth-century havurot (prayer groups), [End Page vii] the prayers of eighteenth-century Jewish women in Central and Eastern Europe, and, currently, the contemporary initiative known as ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Her work shows how the language and images of Jewish piety have been used by different Jewish subgroups living in different eras. At the same time, their expressive culture reflects their broader historical contexts. Aware of the historical and linguistic factors that create the subjects she studies, she also addresses the challenge of studying works by actors who themselves were/are “often written out of history—Hasidim, women, youth, etc.” Weissler finds that her work carries with it a political assertion that her subjects are worthy objects for study. Thus, her work is embedded in the changes occurring both inside and outside the academy. Finally, ethnographer Shaul Kelner explains that his study of the program called Taglit-Birthright Israel, the “state-sponsored tours that have brought more than 300,000 Diaspora Jews to Israel since 1999,” began when he read a 1945 “manifesto” that touted the importance of hiking through the land in order to develop a Zionist consciousness and commitment. Kelner knew that this perspective was widely shared among Zionist educators. Yet, he points out, educators alone could not have created the tourism phenomenon that is Birthright Israel. It is made possible only by “the political, economic, organizational, conceptual and technological resources of the modern age.” As he conducted extensive ethnographic work with the young participants on the tours, Kelner recognized that a full understanding of the impact of Birthright Israel required that he pay serious attention to the tours’ broader historical context. Together, these pieces offer a window into new trends in interdisciplinary work on Jews in America, and they show us the different ways in which historical knowledge can be illuminating for scholars working in the social sciences. [End Page viii] Dianne Ashton Rowan University Footnotes 1. See, for example, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 81, no. 3...

Miming Manu: Women, Authority and Mimicry in a Tantric Context

This paper proposes an example of mimicry as an instance of intertextuality across genres, revealing a complex social response to normative, orthodox attitudes towards women through a close analysis of two very different types of male-authored religious texts from India, Tantric texts and a particularly famous law book, Manava Dharma Śāstra. I argue that mimicry functions to undermine a normative stance towards women by appropriating and subverting the well-known verse from Manu's Law Book that states that women should not be permitted any independence from their male guardians. In this case, this verse is reformulated to reverse the meaning it originally had in Manu's Dharma Śāstra, communicating a very different attitude towards women. This Tantric subversion of Manu suggests not only that elements of legal texts impacted on non-dominant populations through imitation and circulation in circles outside of expected Brahmanical orthodoxy, but also that textual satire via appropriation of these verses may have at times offered resistance, contesting the political assertions of a normative view.

Helmut Schmidt and the Shaping of Western Security in the Late 1970s: the Guadeloupe Summit of 1979

On 5 and 6 January 1979, US President Jimmy Carter, British Prime Minister James Callaghan, French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt met on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. These secret talks à quatre were intended to be a relaxed frank and free exchange on the current state of global politics, though Western security issues lay at the discussions’ heart. As we now know, it had been Schmidt who, behind the scenes, had been pressing the Carter administration to pursue informal (transatlantic) summitry - the Chancellor's preferred modus operandi. In view of growing Euro-strategic imbalances due to Soviet arms build-up, he sought to achieve political co-ordination among the key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) players on the theatre-nuclear-forces-modernisation-cum-arms-control issue. Schmidt's pushiness reflected West Germany's new political assertiveness, but also the Chancellor's desire to personally promote national interests in nuclear politics at the top table (similar to his approach as a shaper of international economic and energy policies). This article will explore why this ‘parley at the summit’ mattered, how within this intimate forum Schmidt pursued his goals, what diplomatic tactics and methods he employed, and to what extent he managed to control and shape proceedings and outcomes.

Solomon Plaatje's Decade of Creative Mobility, 1912–1922: The Politics of Travel and Writing in and beyond South Africa

This article foregrounds the hitherto relatively unexplored travel–writing nexus that characterised the extraordinarily mobile and textually productive, if personally precarious, decade (1912–1922) of Solomon T. Plaatje, founding General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress (later African National Congress) and South Africa's first black novelist in English. Drawing on cross-disciplinary work, including ‘travel writing’ and ‘travel culture’ frameworks, it argues that Plaatje's strategic travel within South Africa and to Britain and North America combined with the production, publication and circulation of his writing during the tumultuous period of landmark South African segregationist legislation and the First World War were telling symbiotic means of African political assertion, cultural nationalism, and self-inscription as a modern global citizen. In effect, Plaatje's travelling and writing put him ‘on the map’, challenging the bounds of white exclusionary politics and intellectual space in the newly consolidated racist dominion state of the Union of South Africa, while also testing the tenets of Empire. Native Life in South Africa (1916), a construct of crisis and political charge against the 1913 Natives' Land Act and associated subjugation of the black majority, is read as a personalised political travelogue for multiple publics, not least aimed at calling for intervention by metropolitan Britain to aid the native cause. Mhudi (1917–1921/1930), with its no-less-resolute but more complex, searching impetus in the context of increasing disillusionment with imperial rule and two costly if provocative deputations to London, is treated as an historicised fictional travel account of the young, black female which challenges colonial, Afrikaner, and traditional African historiographies, while probing possible futures for South Africa in the light of betrayal of black peoples by white. The works concern themselves in part with excavating African, and particularly Bechuana, cultural stores for interplay in the modern world and national asset-building; however they – especially Mhudi – also register something of a modernist search for moorings in a world in upheaval and apparent retrogression. Plaatje's decade of creative mobility, in which travel fuelled his writing and writing galvanised his travel, bore striking witness to the immovable socio-political positions of the South African state and the British imperium, registering the great distance to go in racial equality being achieved.

Will the Real Robert Neville Please, Come Out? Vampirism, the Ethics of Queer Monstrosity, and Capitalism in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend?

In this article, I argue that Richard Matheson's (1954) vampire novella, I Am Legend, encodes the protagonist's, Robert Neville, traumatic recognition of his queer sexuality in its monstrosity (the unspeakability of male penetrability). Neville's identification with and desire for his undead neighbor, Ben Cortman, are symbolically codified through three different registers: intertextual references to vampiric conventions and codes, the semiotics of queer subculture, and a structure of doubling that links Neville to the queer vampire. Although Neville avoids encountering his unspeakable queer desire, which could be represented only at the level of the Lacanian Real, he must still confront Cortman's obsessive exhortations for him to come out. Only when he symbolically codifies his abnormality in its own monstrosity, by viewing himself through mutant vampires' eyes, can Neville reconfigure the ethical relationship between self and other, humans and mutant humans-vampires. However progressive Matheson's novella is in its advocacy of minority sexual rights, it still renders capitalism's problematic relationship with queer subjectivity invisible. Although capitalism overdetermines every aspect of the social field and makes Neville's daily life possible in its surplus enjoyment, the fundamental antagonism (class struggle) in capitalism is obscured by the assertion of identity politics.

The social life of categories

In this article I examine the ways in which the term “indigenous peoples“ is reworked in a specific South Asian context. I focus on the new, hybrid category of “indigenous tribe“ in the Indian state of Meghalaya. I argue that we can think of the indigenous tribe category as a strategic conflation of two different regimes of rights or political assertions. The first relates to the existing nation-state framework for affirmative action as expressed in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, while the second relates to the emerging global framework for asserting the rights of indigenous peoples. While the benefits of asserting the status of indigenous tribes is obvious, for example, preventing other, nonindigenous tribes from owning land in the state, the long-term gains seems more doubtful. Both affirmative action programs and indigenous peoples frameworks are motivated by a moral imperative to redress historical injustices and contemporary social inequalities. To evoke them for other ends might eventually backfire. The larger point I seek to make, however, is that political categories tend to take on a life of their own, escaping their intended purposes and hence applied by people in novel and surprising ways.

Dual Identity Under Threat

Drawing on the literatures on dual identity and politicization, this study relates the political engagement of European-born Muslims to their dual identification as ethno-religious minorities and as citizens. Minorities’ political engagement may target mainstream society and/or ethno-religious communities. Surveying the Turkish and Moroccan Belgian second generation, our study analyzes their support for religious political assertion, participation in ethno-religious and mainstream organizations, and trust in civic institutions. Its explanatory focus is on the dual ethno-religious and civic identifications of the second generation and on perceived discrimination and perceived incompatibility as threats to their dual identity. Our findings show that participation in organizations beyond the ethno-religious community is most likely among high civic and low ethnic identifiers, and lower among dual identifiers. Rather than increasing political apathy, perceived discrimination goes along with higher levels of participation in both ethno-religious and mainstream organizations. Finally, the perception of Islamic and Western ways of life as incompatible predicts greater support for religious political assertion and lower trust in civic institutions. Implications for the role of dual identity and identity threat in the political integration of ethno-religious minorities are discussed.

Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism by Anthony J. Hall

Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism by Anthony J. Hall

Trying to Make Sense of History: Chinese Christian Traditions of Countercultural Belief and their Theological and Political Interpretation of Past and Present History

The dramatic changes occurring in China in recent years have made many intellectuals ask about history, its values, and its purpose. When Chinese Christians reflect about history they find themselves in a contradictory situation. They enjoy the fruits of tremendous social changes, yet they also experience ongoing hostility of the state. Equally, they recognise that social change is not only a blessing, but may also contribute to growing disintegration in society. This paper introduces three interpretations of Chinese history offered by independent Christian groups or individuals. They are attempts to make sense of history and the radical changes and emerging contradictions of the past years. The historical constructs try to shed light on the question where Christians stand in this process of change. The examples presented are (a) the Back to Jerusalem Movement (BJM), a strongly revivalist missionary movement, (b) Yuan Zhi Ming who became famous through a DVD, called China's Confession, and (c) Ren Bumei, a Christian intellectual. They all in different forms offer a political theology that shows a political assertiveness and outspokenness that is atypical of the independent Christian tradition in China. The article concludes that the three presented historical interpretations stand in continuity with a long countercultural history in China. They reflect an experience of powerlessness and a promise of empowerment that are both responses to the experience of life in a totalitarian state.

The politics of public space: “Un espacio liberado” under the big top

This essay explores the proclamation of a “liberated space” as deployed by artists and activists of the NUDEC, Nuevo Nuevo Circo (New New Circus) in Caracas. Operating from a former bullring, these artists collectively interpret and define their terms for liberation, in part through an anti-bullfighting campaign centered on humanism as a political assertion in a venue for the arts. By examining the work of NUDEC in relation to the politics of public space during the first decade of the twenty-first century, certain parallels can be drawn between the New New Circus and the nation.

Review: Clearings in a Concrete Jungle

Clearings in a Concrete Jungle . Television documentary by the Street Farmers (Peter Crump, Bruce Haggart, and Grahame Caine), first aired 18 June 1973 on BBC 2 (BFI archives, British Film Institute, London) Most revolutions start from the streets. The one, however, called for by the British anarchist, activist architectural group Street Farmers in their 1973 documentary Clearings in a Concrete Jungle , did not begin in the streets nor in public demonstration, but from the inner city: the interior of the urban fabric.1 To battle what the documentary diagnosed as the “highly structured detritus of metropolitan imagination,” the social and political revolution should start from the house and the way of inhabiting the land. The TV program envisioned a change of the city as a whole, achieved through tactical changes in small pieces—islands of habitation taken “off the grid” of energy supply. The main theme of the documentary was one of the earliest ecological houses, the Eco-House, or Street Farmhouse, built in 1972 as a laboratory and living experiment by Grahame Caine, a member of the Street Farmers, which was originally formed by Peter Crump and Bruce Haggart. The Eco-House was a fully functional, integrated system that converted human waste to methane for cooking, as well as included a hydroponic greenhouse that produced radishes, tomatoes, and even bananas. Caine, then a twenty-six-year-old fourth-year student at the Architectural Association of London, designed and built the house on land borrowed from Thames Polytechnic in Eltham, South London, as part of his diploma thesis at the AA. He received a provisional two-year permit from the borough of Woolwich district surveyor with the promise to build an “inhabitable housing laboratory” that would grow vegetables out of household effluents and fertilize the land with reprocessed organic waste. With the help of the Street Farmers, Caine was able to start construction in September 1972, during his fifth year, and to inhabit the house by Christmas. After having lived in the house for two years with his family, …

Social Researchers, Right-Wing Demagogues, and the "Blank Space" in American Democracy

On April 8, 2011, less than a fortnight ago as I write, minority whip Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) announced on the Senate floor that you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood. And that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does (Collins, 2011). Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards quickly countered that the real figure is actually 3% (Bassett, 2011). Later that day, Kyl's press secretary, Ryan Patmintra, reported to CNN that the 90% figure not intended to be a factual (Nowicki, 2011). PolitiFact (2011b), a 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonpartisan Web site dedicated to evaluating the truthfulness of political assertions, concluded that Kyl's statement greatly exaggerated Planned Parenthoods involvement in providing abortions. Kyl eventually admitted to misrepresenting an estimate he had taken from a report published by the Chiaroscuro Foundation (2011), a nonprofit, pro-life group (Nowicki, 2011). Commenting on the Kyl debacle, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts (2011) concluded that his review of 100 pants on fire political statements (that is, assertions that are untrue and that make ridiculous claims) evaluated on PolitiFact indicated that when it comes to serial lying, to the biggest, most brazen, most audacious lies, the hes repeated ad nauseam until people mistake them for the truth, when it comes to the most absolute contempt for the facts and for the necessity of honest debate, it is not even close. Conservatives have no equal. Lies, distortions, and calumny seem to permeate contemporary political discourse, from Sarah Palin's allegation that President Obama's health care bill would institute death panels for elderly people to Rush Limbaugh's (2009) bizarre contention that Obama was seeking to mandate circumcision. De spite the imbecilic quality of the conspiracy-theory rants of right-wing celebrities like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck that currently suffuse the air waves, right-wing demagogues are influential. Polls indicate that 18% to 24% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and his repeated denials (Holan, 2010). Donald Trump, the well-known real estate entrepreneur, is currently leading the pack of potential Republican presidential nominees, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he has joined forces with the birther movement and publically questioned the president's citizenship (PolitiFact, 2011a). Most social researchers are surely troubled, if not appalled, by the mean and misleading nature of contemporary popular political discourse. A majority, perhaps, regards the rampant mendacity of public figures as an exigent, even existential threat to American democracy. Yet social researchers seem rarely to enter the political fray in a meaningful, decisive manner, despite the light that they could shed on pressing social problems. We should ponder the reasons for our current disengagement from the political process and then do something about it--particularly given that the Internet and the utilities it has spawned, like Facebook and Twitter, now provide propagandists and other purveyors of political misinformation with the most powerful tools for their purposes the world has ever known. Perhaps the most contemptible and potentially dangerous of recent politically motivated assaults on the truth are Glenn Beck's diatribes against political scientist, sociologist, and former Columbia University School of Social Work faculty member Frances Fox Piven. Beck has launched literally dozens of ad hominem attacks on Piven on his radio and TV programs and his Web site, the Blaze (http://www.theblaze.com). Beck initially focused on Piven's landmark article The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty, which she coauthored with her husband, Richard Cloward (Cloward & Piven, 1966). Therein, the authors presented what has become known as the Cloward-Piven strategy (n. …

Des formes de la protestation politique (France, XVIIe – XIXe siècles)

The forms of protest that women occasionally adopted express a social and political assertion. Generally, they borrowed forms in circulation: civil procedures for the grievances under the ancient regime, declarations of human rights during the French revolution. After the Revolution, the adoption by women of the right of petition to the constituted powers is a massive phenomenon remaining practically unknown and little studied. The petitions of women are ancient demonstrations which are not only related to modern history; they are comparable with the ‘voices’ described by Hirschman and Boltanski. By marking out the political history of the modern period, they have an explanatory significance for political events and also contribute to the formation of public opinion.

Redescubriendo la Gran Chichimeca: Revalorización regional y antropología social en la recuperación de una pluralidad étnica mexicana

For centuries Mexicans have used the term “Chichimeca” as a synonym for “Barbarian” or “Savage.” However, in the past decades a deeper understanding of the Chichimeca peoples —largely affected by a political assertiveness of the regions in Mexico— has resulted in a fresh reconstruction of the memory of the Spanish conquest and, thereby, of the view of these peoples. To a unexpected extent, social anthropology —particularly, the “Seminario Permanente de Estudios de la Gran Chichimeca” (SPECH), promoting regular discussions and publications on the subject from different academic disciplines— has contributed to this rehabilitation as well. A convergence is thus emerging between new scholarly interest in the indigenous nations of Mexico’s northern frontier —taking the Chichimeca out of the ostracism to which official history in the country had confined them— and a newly found reason for pride among the rest of the population in belonging to the same area.

Milosevic's Voters

This 2004 paper is based on an original public opinion survey on nationalism in five East European countries and deals with the grassroots of ethnic conflict in postcommunist Europe, with a special focus on the Balkans. In other words, it is concerned with Milosevic’s voters (and others like them) rather than with the historical circumstances that have the potential to generate ethnic conflict, political environments that allow nationalist leaders to win votes, and political institutions that favor certain outcomes in specific conflict circumstances. Its main goal is to test the hypothesis that mass attitudes or behavior are the main causes of the Balkan ethnic conflict, or of any other ethnic conflict for that matter. Due to its positive association with political fatalism and distrust in politics a model of nationalism emerges from surveys as a substitute ideology, a form of distinctive political identity. Postcommunist nationalism is the ideology of non-ideologues, a form of political assertiveness of the less informed and more frustrated. But most of all, its essence is residual, as it draws on individuals high on communist attitudes such as authoritarianism, and nostalgia for the former regime. From a mass phenomenon in the nineties postcommunist nationalism is bound to see serious decline.

Hearts and minds and votes: the role of democratic participation in countering terrorism

There has been a growth in the level and variety of political activism within Muslim communities in the UK in recent years. It takes a variety of forms, from formal political organization and activism, to volunteering, civic entrepreneurialism and the assertion of politics through personal acts and behaviour. Some of this political activism has been met with fear and trepidation as observers worry it is a sign of subversive behaviour or a desire for separatism. However, in most cases this mobilization is a welcome development, not just because it enhances the democratic health of the nation, but because it is a necessary component of attempts to counter the threat from violent extremism. As the introduction to this special issue outlines, democracy should render violence unnecessary because it allows all groups and individuals to express their views and interests through a process of rational deliberation. This article explores this point through the lens of the experience of British Muslims and argues that heightened political activism is a positive sign and can, ultimately, contribute to the elimination of terrorism.

Militants of Truth, Communities of Equality: Badiou and the ignorant schoolmaster

Badiou's philosophy of the ‘event’ has itself become an event of sorts for contemporary social and political theory. It has broken radically with a set of propositions concerning the operation of power, the status of knowledge, and the possibility of action that were for some time considered nearly unquestionable, in many ways defining what Badiou might call ‘the state of the situation’. After briefly outlining the manner in which Badiou's reinvigoration of the concept of ‘truth’ constitutes a serious challenge for the politics of difference and the ethics of alterity, this paper explores the significance for educational philosophy of what, borrowing from Jacques Rancière, Badiou calls the ‘axiom of equality’, or the notion that, in democratic politics, ‘equality must be postulated not willed’. I suggest that this axiom is best understood when read in relation to Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and thus explore an intrinsic link between Badiou's more obscure philosophical claims and political assertions on the one hand, and the question of education on the other. I further propose that the limitations of Badiou's criticism of Rancière's work, which suggests that he stops short of locating an effective political subject who might oppose the parliamentary state, are revealed most explicitly when we reassess Rancière's approach to education in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and in his more recent work on political aesthetics. Ultimately, however, I conclude that a truly democratic approach to education will have to learn from both Badiou and Rancière, and take seriously the ‘axiom of equality’.