Political Dangers Research Articles

World Literatures, Cosmopolitan Publics

Abstract In this article we use the rich sources provided by the press coverage of the 1936 Congress of the PEN Club in Buenos Aires to examine international interactions around literature in times of violence and censorship. We contend that the Congress allows for a reading of the different worlds of literature beyond the traditional categories of text, reader, writer and critic. Our study moves away from canonical authors and literature as an institution to focus on World Literature as a form of experience. We focus on the producers and consumers of literature as embodied multilingual presences and thereby provide a more nuanced understanding of World Literature. Bruce Robbins’s notion of “cosmopolitanisms from below” allows us to rethink the notion of World Literature within the framework of a “lived” cosmopolitanism deployed at a time of political danger.

Sociétés d’accueil et de teranga

Throughout his career the sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad argued that emigration and immigration are interdependent. He warns against media and political representations of migration which focus solely on the country of arrival and thus make it more difficult for us to understand the ‘double’ nature of migration. In this article we explore the epistemological and political dangers analysed by Sayad (an ‘ethnocentric’ notion of immigration) and by Anne McClintock (a ‘eurocentric’ idea of the postcolonial) through a reading of three texts by the Senegalese writer Fatou Diome. This approach allows a better understanding of certain aspects of migration rarely discussed in the press and in political discourse in Europe, while also showing that processes of myth-making about migration persist on all sides.

Offline: General practice—changing the laws of nature

Julian Tudor Hart (1927–2018): “The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served. This inverse care law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced.” He wrote his famous Lancet paper on the inverse care law from the Glyncorrwg Health Centre in Port Talbot, Wales, in 1971. His death last year was the motivation for an inspirational gathering of 200 people in Glasgow last week to discuss the exceptional potential of general practice. Led by Graham Watt, Emeritus Professor of General Practice and Primary Care (University of Glasgow), the meeting aimed to distil lessons from Tudor Hart's work and examine how those experiences have informed one of the most ambitious and transformational health programmes ever implemented in the UK—the Deep End Project. (Deep End began in Scotland and is now a UK-wide primary care initiative to advance the health of people living in especially deprived communities.) Tudor Hart's philosophy might be summarised in three principles. First, medicine without a theory of justice is no medicine at all. Second, the health of individuals cannot be separated from the health of societies and the values underpinning those societies. Third, research matters, not only because it delivers reliable knowledge but also because it can be a powerful political instrument for social action. The forces threatening these principles today are formidable. Governments, despite their words, seem less committed, some even actively hostile, to the notion of a publicly funded health system free at the point of use. The political dangers facing health and health care extend well beyond the reach of governments—transnational corporations, international private finance, and a more intensive era of capitalism that promotes the alleged magical powers of the market. And our own profession has been (and remains) complicit. When one examines the work of the most powerful health institutions shaping health policy in the UK—the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Public Health England, Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research, and medical schools—one question looms: where have they been? In campaigning against health inequity and health injustice in society, nowhere. Preferring, perhaps, to retain a seat at the tables of political power rather than contribute to what Graham Watt has called a “resistance movement”, these institutions have failed to defend the society they claim to be concerned about. General practice can, at least partly, fill the void. But one should be careful too. Careful not to pit general practitioners who emphasise the value of continuing personal stories against colleagues who work tirelessly to deliver the highest quality medical care. Careful not to pit primary care against specialist care. (The Lancet's Liver Commission proves that hospital specialists are just as committed to tackling deprivation, poverty, inequity, social exclusion, and stigma.) And careful when saying “we are on a ship that is sinking” or that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) is “on the brink of collapse”. There are those who want NHS professionals to admit failure. If we say the NHS is sinking and about to collapse, we give those who wish to dismantle the NHS the authority to do so. We should be more strategic. There are great opportunities. In Graham Watt's words—in his exceptional book, The Exceptional Potential of General Practice (2019)—general practitioners are rebuilding society as a cooperative endeavour. Evidence presented in Glasgow showed that the inverse care law is not a law. A law is a phenomenon that always occurs if certain conditions are present. Inverse care is not such a phenomenon. General practice can change the laws of nature. As Graham writes, “general practitioners are at the crossroads of societal change”. Research provides the platform for political action. Why haven't we used research findings to reject the vicious, racist myths about migrants, their health, and their contributions to society? Why haven't we taken on the commercial determinants of health? Why haven't we held politicians more accountable for the promises they have failed to deliver? Graham writes that there is “something elemental about general practice”. What he and his extraordinary Deep End colleagues have created is a unique programme of clinical, social, and political action. It is reproducible. Doctors should flock to Glasgow, Dublin, and Yorkshire to understand their remarkable achievements.

Art History at the Barricades

Art History at the Barricades

Harry Annison (2015) Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability and Penal Policy. Oxford University Press.

Not applicable

Naturalism and its political dangers: Jakob Thomasius against Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. A study and the translation of Thomasius’ text

ABSTRACTJakob Thomasius was a well-known professor who in 1670 chose to address a new anonymous text in a faculty lecture. The text was Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (TTP). Five years earlier, Thomasius had attacked libertine philosophers in two other faculty lectures, and now explicitly links those lectures with this critique of the TTP. This article examines the argumentative strategy and structure of Thomasius’ 1670 lecture, in the light of those 1665 lectures, to see what it was that upset the Leipzig professor. Thomasius’ text is a rarity in that it aims to critique the TTP primarily on political grounds, not religious, but this sees Thomasius’ fear of naturalism assume strongly political tones of fear of faction. This article assesses Thomasius’ version of moderate censorship, the link he draws between Hobbes and innovation, his debt to Comenius, and the coherence of his defence of moderate Lutheranism. This article also provides a translation of Thomasius’ heretofore untranslated text.

On the Invisible Threat: Bacteriologists in Fiction and Periodical Advertisements, 1894–1913

This article explores the values attributed to the new science of bacteriology in five early stories of bacteriologists: H. G. Wells’ ‘The Stolen Bacillus’ (1894), T. Mullett Ellis’s Zalma (1895), W. L. Alden’s ‘The Purple Death’ (1895), Algernon Blackwood’s ‘Max Hensig’ (1907), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’ (1913). I argue that the new science becomes a vehicle for anxieties about anarchist terrorism and German militarism. Responding to Martin Willis’s (2011) account of the microscope’s creative function at the fin de siecle, I suggest that the distinctive qualities of bacteriological science inflect the plot and style of these tales, as well as the nature of their fictional antagonists. These qualities include the magnification of an otherwise invisible threat and the ensuing distortion of the scientist’s moral judgement, the discrepancy between microbial size and potency, and German dominance in the field. The formal mechanisms of the texts, their patterns of tension and revelation, are also shown to interact with the new dynamics of bacteriological science and its play of visibility and invisibility. Comparing these texts with contemporaneous advertisements, I point out that the bacteriologist was simultaneously portrayed, to the same audiences, as a vector of threat and a trustworthy authority underwriting new commercial products. This divergence suggests the pliancy of bacteriology’s cultural significance and the limited influence of fiction on commercial uses of bacteriology. I argue that such fiction exploits limited public knowledge of the bacteriologist to develop an enduring motif of bacteriology as a moral and political danger.

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

The Coming Political

Abstract Intelligence is the human being’s most striking feature. There is no consensually held scientific understanding of intelligence. The term is no less indeterminate in the sphere of artificial intelligence. Definitions are fluid in both cases. But technical applications and biotechnical developments do not wait for scientific clarity and definitional precision. The near future will bring significant advances in technical and biotechnical areas, including the genetic enhancement of human intelligence (HI) as well as artificial intelligence (AI). I show how developments in both areas will challenge human communities in various ways and that the danger of AI is distinctly political. The argument develops in six steps. (1) I compare and contrast artificial with human intelligence in general and (2) AI with HI genetically modified. Then I correlate and differentiate (3) emergent properties and distributed intelligence, both natural and artificial, as well as (4) neural function, both natural and artificial. (5) Finally, I identify the specifically political capabilities I see in HI and (6) political dangers that AI poses to them.

Malaysia's Missing Billions

A recent scandal involving a colossal theft from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) has shaken Malaysia to its core. Filings by the U.S. Justice Department allege that more than US$4.5 billion was stolen between the creation of 1MDB in 2009 and 2015, with some reportedly going to pay for such luxury purchases as a $260 million superyacht. Intimidation and personnel changes worked to stifle investigations by domestic enforcement agencies, and Prime Minister Najib Razak, facing heavy criticism over the scandal, is seeking to shield himself through dangerous identity politics and purges of detractors in his party. The 1MDB affair has also revealed the continued complicity of global financial institutions, including major international banks, in kleptocratic money laundering. Fighting kleptocracy will require a new cross-border legal mechanism and far stiffer due-diligence requirements for financial institutions.

Language is a Public Thing

Manifestos have resurfaced as fuel for firing political imaginations and calling people to action in a threatening time. But what can they really accomplish? A rethinking of the limitations of manifestos—their panic-driven contexts, their emphasis on collectivities rather than individuals, the vagueness and combativeness of their language—suggests that there may be other more fruitful ways of instilling care of and for language in everyday life and politics. With due deference to Orwell for his focus on the political dangers of not caring for language, we posit that his prescriptions can also inhibit our abilities to communicate in productive ways, across disparate communities that might stand to gain from breaking out of strictures on political language and expression. Inspired by Arendt’s call to “think what we are doing,” we propose as a starting point a language charter that will make language everyone’s business.

The Creation of Illegal Migration in the German Confederation, 1815–1866

ABSTRACTThis article puts the control, regulation and management of migration into the historical context of Germany’s nascent statehood in the 19th century. Underlying the discussion is the basic premise that regimes of illegal migration are characterized by the interrelation between migration movements and the way the state administration deals with them: “Illegal migration” crystallizes around the ideological and political principles of migration and sedentariness which exist at a given time, and those authorities and tools which are used for its administration. In the German states, migration and migrants were gradually illegalized in the first half of the 19th century and became a driving force in the formation of the German state. “Individuals without legitimation” and “homeless people” were to be tracked down, expelled and, wherever possible, accepted back by their “home states.” The search for “domestic security” and “welfare” was one of the core motivational factors for the German states, expressed in the three patterns of argumentation regarding the demarcation of borders: economy, cultural identity, and political danger. As a result, the ensuing criteria for illegalization consolidated ideas of desired and undesired populations and gave rise to a regime of illegal migration, the structure of which was essentially characterized by inter-governmental “cartel conventions” on expulsions, culminating in the Gotha Treaty in 1851. This article provides the first systematic evidence for the utilitarian mechanisms which led to the illegalization of migration and migrants during the process of state formation and analyses the related discourse on “desired persons,” “tolerated persons” and “troublesome persons.”

Does the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security agenda speak with, for or to women in the Asia Pacific? The development of National Action Plans in the Asia Pacific

ABSTRACTUsing a critical feminist security studies approach, this article explores the emancipatory possibilities of translating the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security agenda to countries in the Asia Pacific through the development of national and regional level policy frameworks. It asks whether the common pitfalls of emancipation can be overcome in efforts by stakeholders to encourage a more inclusive, grounded and gender aware approach to security in the region. The paper engages the very real political dangers and constraints to pursuing emancipatory politics in this field but ultimately identifies the opportunities for emancipatory action.

Dangerous Politics: Risk, Vulnerability, and Penal Policy (Clarendon Studies in Criminology) H. Annison. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015) 288pp. £65.00hb ISBN 9780198728603

Dangerous Politics: Risk, Vulnerability, and Penal Policy (Clarendon Studies in Criminology) H. Annison. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015) 288pp. £65.00hb ISBN 9780198728603

Anderson, B.Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control2013Oxford University Press224 pp £63.00 (hardback) £25.00 (paperback)

Anderson, B.Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control2013Oxford University Press224 pp £63.00 (hardback) £25.00 (paperback)

Liberalism, Disfigured

Liberalism, Disfigured

Book review: Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability and Penal Policy

Book review: Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability and Penal Policy

An unworkable plan.

A document that details government concerns about a 7-day NHS was released to a national newspaper in August, revealing the precarious state of NHS finances in England. The 'secret' internal document, known as the risk register, sets out civil servant assessments of the political danger in trying to implement the new working pattern throughout the health service.

Looking Beyond ‘White Slavery’: Trafficking, the Jewish Association, and the dangerous politics of migration control in England, 1890-1910

This article seeks to revise Jo Doezema’s suggestion that ‘the white slave’ was the only dominant representation of ‘the trafficked woman’ used by early anti-trafficking advocates in Europe and the United States, and that discourses based on this figure of injured innocence are the only historical discourses that are able to shine light on contemporary anti-trafficking rhetoric. ‘The trafficked woman’ was a figure painted using many shades of grey in the past, with a number of injurious consequences, not only for trafficked persons but also for female labour migrants and migrant populations at large. In England, dominant organisational portrayals of ‘the trafficked woman’ had acquired these shades by the 1890s, when trafficking started to proliferate amid mass migration from Continental Europe, and when controversy began to mount over the migration of various groups of working-class foreigners to the country.This article demonstrates these points by exploring the way in which the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW), one of the pillars of England’s early anti-trafficking movement, represented the female Jewish migrants it deemed at risk of being trafficked into sex work between 1890 and 1910. It argues that the JAPGW stigmatised these women, placing most of the blame for trafficking upon them and positioning them to a greater or a lesser extent as ‘undesirable and undeserving working-class foreigners’ who could never become respectable English women. It also contends that the JAPGW, in outlining what was wrong with certain female migrants, drew a line between ‘the migrant’ and respectable English society at large, and paradoxically endorsed the extension of the very ‘anti-alienist’ and Antisemitic prejudices that it strove to dispel.

Book review: H Annison, Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability and Penal Policy

Harry Annison’s Dangerous Politics is an in-depth study of the ‘creation, contestation, amendment, and abolition’ of the controversial indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) (Annison, 2016: 3). The book addresses the important question, first posed by Brown (2010: 43), of ‘why, in modern liberal societies, do we seem so willing to trade away the liberty rights of those deemed dangerous and why in such a wholesale fashion?’ (p. xi). Annison uses a framework of ‘interpretive political analysis’ (p. xii) to explore how and why the IPP sentence came into existence, and why potentially restraining influ- ences appeared to have little effect on the progress of a policy that was to prove so damaging. By weaving a rich and authoritative narrative, he skilfully incorporates materials from an impressive 63 qualitative interviews with key actors and observers, including politicians, civil servants, special advisers, judges and criminal justice practitioners.