Notion Of Politics Research Articles

Fragmented: highways and the failure of the Abbasabad project in Tehran

ABSTRACT Abbasabad is one of the largest symbolic political urban projects in contemporary Iran, covering over 5.5 million square metres. Despite its constant political significance since the 1960s and envisioning six exclusive master plans during two regimes, the project faced considerable delays and devastating fragmentation. While all the narratives attribute the unsuccessful history in Abbasabad to macropolitical drawbacks, this study traces the failure by focusing on the emergence of an unseen, non-discursive, and non-human actor. This actor is the highway, which is present throughout Abbasabad and divides the announced official project into several regions, each with its distinct functions and visions. Because the project is ultimately a loss, its history of failure matters more than the official narratives represented in the master plans. Using the Foucauldian genealogical approach and shifting from the notion of politics to relational politics given in ANT, highways emerge as actors with different roles and significant impacts, evolving and interacting unstoppably with Abbasabad. This narrative takes a more grounded perspective, indicating that highways have influenced the master plans, not vice versa. Moreover, politicians had the opportunity to consider such factors; however, macropolitical forces belittled them by pursuing mega-scaled integrated concepts.

NAVIGATING NEW CHALLENGES: WESTERN BALKANS AT THE CROSSROADS OF EU INTEGRATIONS

For several years now, European integration has been recognized as a key strategy to achieve dual goals in the Western Balkans: peace and stability. The European perspective is a commitment not only to the foreign policy of this region but also a great expectation of the citizens of these countries. The Western Balkans, as the European Union calls it after the integration of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, is a political notion with more than a geographical definition. The Western Balkans, a region which includes: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo, throughout the Cold War period was the area where East and West were divided. After the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which followed the signing of the Maastricht Treaty and the establishment of the European Union, euphoria and enthusiasm for joining a united Europe grew. Thus, the prospect of a common future of the Western Balkans in a democratic and prosperous Europe now seemed more than feasible. Today, the countries of the Western Balkans that have passed the transition period, still encounter the difficulties of their consolidation or the stability of bilateral agreements. Although they are located in the European continent with cultural diversity in a narrow space, they continue to remain out of place in the Euro-integration process. Economic development, commercial exchanges, investments, unemployment, etc., are another dimension of the countries of the Western Balkans, but also the initiatives of some countries for an opening within the area called a mini-Schengen, and then turned into “Open Balkan” which was specifically replaced by the “Berlin Process”, which began in 2014, as a proposal by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to accelerate the European integration of the Western Balkan countries. The difficult economic situation combined with inherited political problems has created large discrepancies between countries of this region in relation to the benefits that come from the EU. The created situation has contributed to some states expanding and increasing their influencing power in this region, such as the influence of Russia. These issues represent some of the main points of view of the conference, which aims to bring together researches from the countries of the region to present their studies and views on the issues of the integration of Western Balkans into the EU and to exchange experiences, ideas and discuss other relevant issues related to the topics of the conference.

Establishing the Health Governance of Flows: Authority Performances and Expertise at the International Sanitary Conference of 1892

Abstract At the 1892 International Sanitary Conference in Venice, experts established international health politics as governing the flows of people, traffic, and information. This focus has remained ingrained in current health politics and shaped the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper focuses on the micropolitics among these experts to understand the emergence of such governance expertise. In Venice, experts struggled to perform authority as European governments were unwilling to accept authoritative international expert practice. In response, the experts limited the role of international politics to regulating the movements of information, traffic, and people to make their expertise more agreeable. Such compromising governance expertise entailed two acts of silencing. The experts claimed that interventions that limited themselves to governing these flows were still highly effective and also silenced the de facto intrusiveness of their expertise into colonized sites. Combining classical sociology with science and technology studies, this article contributes conceptually by detailing how authority performances affect governance expertise. Contributing to the history of international relations, I show how the notion of international health politics as governing flows—rather than targeting ill health with global sanitary reform—became established in the late nineteenth century.

Managing Unpredictability

While research has delved into the political and protest potential of memes, the analyses have largely left out political memes of marginalized communities. This article provides an analysis of Finnish trans memes on Instagram, focusing simultaneously on their political arguments and on the intimate public formed around them. Based on 18 media diaries and interviews with Finnish gender minorities, this article explores how Finnish trans memes on Instagram articulate how unjust social infrastructures create vulnerability and unpredictability in trans lives, while at the same time creating feelings of connection between and across identities, and alleviating feelings of vulnerability through laughter and care. The article challenges the traditional notion of politics as being outside of intimate publics, arguing that Finnish trans memes’ articulation of the vulnerability and unpredictability resulting from unjust infrastructure is, in fact, the connecting glue of the intimate public.

Failing interventions to harness English fever infiltrating early childhood education in South Korea: politics of distraction

ABSTRACT As English is recognised as an influential language in the globalised world and social and economic capital for individuals, Koreans put tremendous effort and financial resources into learning English, instigating a social malady called ‘English fever.’ The fever has recently infiltrated early childhood education, leading to the expansion of exorbitant, half-day English immersion programmes for preschoolers, called English-medium kindergartens (EKs). Despite the recent policies to minimise the influence of English in Early Childhood English education and enhance students’ well-being and whole-person development, English fever is still prevalent, causing detrimental effects on children. Using the notion of politics of distraction and the ethics in language planning and policy as theoretical and analytical frameworks, this paper examines how and why the education policy fails to address English fever. Drawing on a qualitative case study at three EKs, this study reveals the perceptions, dynamics and processes in early childhood English education that are disregarded and remain invisible in relevant policies. The study sheds light on the harm of distractive policy, asking policy researchers and designers to refocus their effort on what truly matters, through integrating language ethics into policymaking, thus, refocusing on children's holistic development and emotional well-being.

IDENTITY POLITICS IN PROGRESS: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SYAFII MAARIF’S IDEAS

In Indonesia’s political landscape, there is a current tension between identity politics and populist ideologies. Identity politics is a broad term used to describe political movements and actions related to religious identities and institutions, particularly in an Islamic setting. However, it raises concern about how we will investigate identity politics as part of a contextual, constituent-based approach to politics. The current study investigates Syafii Maarif’s political views. By employing a social hermeneutic approach and interpretive methodologies, this thought is elaborated in this study. The investigation reveals three primary elements of identity politics based on Maarif’s analysis: 1) ethnicity, 2) religion, and 3) political ideology. According to Maarif, any political activity that has these three characteristics is intrinsically saturated with identity politics. As a result, Muslim politics are often limited and narrowly defined. To address this constraint, the findings of this study advocate the actualization of the notion of identity politics to make space for populist politics. While religion, ethnicity, and political ideology coexist, a populist approach is still relevant in Islamic politics, persuasion methods, and specific constituency-based political connections.

Assembling the multitude: the transversal potential of categories for social work practice

This article elaborates on a theoretically informed model of action rooted in the concept of professional resistance, which approaches groups of people and social problems in an alternative way to the dominant modes of managerial practice. The aim is to create conditions for approaching groups with social needs differently and to be able to act politically for social change within contemporary society. We will do this by exploring the potential of the assembly in line with Hardt, Negri and Butler, as well as the notion of transversal politics as developed by Yuval-Davis, for creating political subjectivities and alliances across differences. The reason for this theoretical approach is based on how the effects of categorisation and its political function can sometimes be challenging to identify. This is argued to especially be the case within a neoliberal capitalist society where categories induce competition between precarious groups to maintain the political status quo.

Pluralism and Monotheism: On Apophatic Intolerance

AbstractThis paper explores the dangerous yet liberative potentials of so‐called monotheistic intolerance, arguing for its importance in pluralistic politics. Drawing upon the work of political theorist Chantal Mouffe, I examine conventional political notions of inclusivity and show how the metaphysics of “the One True God” has political analogs not merely in despotic, exclusive absolutism but in agonistic pluralism. The metaphysical correlate of pluralism, I argue, is not merely in polytheism but in “apophatic intolerance”—the refusal to lay claim upon the Absolute, the denial of its representation—a subtle mechanics at the heart of monotheism. And yet, ambivalently coinciding with this emancipatory intolerance is a violence‐laden “Mosaic distinction” between true and false religion. The political theology of Egyptologist Jan Assmann helps us interpret such volatile but crucial intolerance for our own democratic and pluralistic context.

Infrastructural politics: A conceptual mapping and critical review

The notion of infrastructural politics has been increasingly used in urban studies as it helps to explore urbanisation processes, the urban condition and urban life. Given its relevance, this article maps out and critically reviews the main analytical strands that inform its meanings, namely, conventional and popular infrastructural politics. These strands reveal the current tendency to demarcate infrastructural politics as two separate, antagonistic domains that associate the notion with particular hegemonic and subaltern actors, practices and processes. The article problematises this tendency and proposes a broader understanding of infrastructural politics as an ordinary and contentious political arena where diverse actors develop politico-infrastructural repertoires that co-exist in multifaceted, conflictive ways rather than as separate domains. Drawing on political ethnographic understandings of politics, infrastructural politics is conceived as a point of convergence where conventional and popular infrastructural politics meet and mesh. This suggests the possibility of cross-fertilising conversations between infrastructure studies and political ethnography that can refine our understanding of infrastructural politics, first, by promoting a more nuanced examination of the overlaps and interdependencies between hegemonic and subaltern politico-infrastructural actors and practices, and second, by addressing the critical role of infrastructures in enabling and materialising such overlaps and interdependencies.

Nineteenth-century Nottingham Drinking Behaviour, 1800–1900

In this article, I use an eclectic data set that spans several data sets – Trade directories, newspaper articles, ordinance maps, and photographs, including sketches – to understand the discourses of alcohol provision in Nottinghamshire during the long nineteenth century. Thus, I show that alcohol provision in Nottingham and the influence of temperance ideology was a fraught battle between contrasting moralistic predilections regarding the behavioural and political notions of the lasting effects of alcohol consumption within nineteenth-century communities. Attitudes towards alcohol consumption were not a simple choice between teetotalism and drunkenness but a more nuanced debate that went to the core of societal norms and accepted cultural traditions that contradicted the governmental and moralising forces of the paternalistic reformists emerging in this period.

Race, gender, and Occidentalism in global reactionary discourses

Abstract This article seeks to deepen understanding of the global politics of reactionary discursive formations, which at the current conjuncture increasingly coalesce around self-victimising articulations of racial nationalism and a rejection of social justice struggles, often delegitimated as ‘elitist’ in Western core contexts or ‘Western’ in postcolonial spaces. Drawing on insights from feminist and postcolonial scholarship on racial entanglements, masculinism, and Occidentalism, I argue that racialised and gendered imaginations about an emasculated and overly multiracial West and, relatedly, renewed East/West binaries enable reactionary discourses in both Western societies and elsewhere through adaptable mechanisms of mediating between the international and the domestic. I then extend an analysis of global racial entanglements and gendered East/West binaries to Chinese anti-baizuo discourse from both online nationalists and dissident intellectuals, which provides a prime example of how grammars of global reactionary discourse are localised in different political projects and ideological constellations. It demonstrates how reactionary imaginations of the West are instrumental for animating narratives of racial-civilisational hierarchy and masculinist notions of politics and society hostile to egalitarian and emancipatory ideals in a ‘non-Western’ context. Moreover, by highlighting overlaps and divergence in the refashioning of dualistic constructs in American and Chinese ‘anti-woke’ narratives, I show that reactionary discourses operate not only across the geopolitical divide, but also through it, invoked by opposing political forces sharing ethnonationalist and masculinist logics in processes of mutual othering to perpetuate antagonistic identities. The article contributes to the intersection between critical research on the global right and postcolonial International Relations (IR).

Directing innovation towards just outcomes: the role of principles and politics

ABSTRACT Contemporary innovation theorists tend to defend a combination of Schumpeterian and Keynesian politics of innovation as a solution to the problem of the directionality of new technologies. Their hope is that the Schumpeterian motor of innovation would keep entrepreneurs incentivised to take market opportunities and the Keynesian state would invest in infrastructure, redistributing risks and rewards. In contrast, Hayekian theorists of innovation insist that state interventions aiming at directionality suffer from epistemological and moral problems. For them, politics of innovation ought to abandon the idea of directionality altogether because it is morally questionable and creates disincentives for taking up new risky ventures. Instead, the politics of innovation ought to be restricted to promoting an institutional environment that is conducive to entrepreneurship. I will argue that despite differences, both theoretical camps rely on liberal notions of morality and politics which justify predominantly distributional currencies of justice, overlooking questions of relational equality in innovation.

Closing the Gender Gap in Internal Political Efficacy? Gender Roles and the Masculine Ethos of Politics in Spain

AbstractGiven women’s gains in employment, education, and economic status, the persistent gender gap in internal political efficacy remains a puzzle for social scientists. We go beyond standard socioeconomic explanations and consider gender roles, which, unlike socioeconomic situation, are a slow-moving force constrained by gendered socialization. Stereotypically feminine traits jar with stereotypical notions of politics in general, as competitive, and leaders as power-seeking and assertive. Drawing on observational data from an original survey fielded in Spain, we show that this incongruence accounts for women’s perception of having a low capacity to participate in politics. Results from a survey experiment suggest that this relationship is not set in stone, however. When politicians’ motivation is framed in line with feminine traits—as a public service rather than a struggle for power—women consider themselves just as capable as men of participating in politics. The results have implications for women’s political participation and representation in politics.

Using Spielraum for a Normative Definition of Politics: Obama’s Play Politics and Trump’s Asceticism

The terms “politics” and “political” have become so overdetermined that it is difficult to use them in any effective manner. We argue that this has dangerous political consequences, and that this could be addressed by providing a new, sounder, notion of politics. This paper argues that defining politics in relation to the notion of play can provide a notion both intuitively appealing and able to withstand the problematic overdeterminations. We argue that politics is the set of practices through which the indeterminate of Spielraum is made more determinate. This suggests that politics is always partly a matter of play: it is about instituting values without making any claims about the legitimacy of this instituting act. With reference to Huizinga and Nietzsche’s analyses of play, we define play as the living unity of seriousness and frivolity, and non-play as either seriousness without frivolity or frivolity without seriousness. In order to illustrate this, we comparatively analyse the attitudes of Barack Obama and Donald Trump in the single context of the well-known yearly White House Correspondent’s Dinner. There, we see two opposed attitudes to playfulness. Our analysis allows us to apply our Spielraum model of politics to show that the thrust of Obama’s attitude involves an embrace of the non-foundational nature of politics as play, whereas Trump’s attitude is politicidal: it is animated by a refusal to acknowledge its own lack of foundation, leading to an oscillation between over-seriousness and over-frivolity.

Young democrats, critical citizens and protest voters: studying the profiles of movement party supporters

The rise of movement parties in Europe has disrupted traditional notions of party politics, introducing new avenues for citizen engagement and political mobilisation. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the electorate of movement parties, using nationally representative survey data from six European countries. We identify four types of movement parties: green/left-libertarian, far-right, eclectic, and centrist, and examine the distinct profiles of their voters. The only common characteristic we find across movement party supporters is their belief in the influence of protests. We argue that green/left-libertarian voters embody a generational gap in political participation, as they utilise both electoral and non-electoral engagement to express their post-industrial demands. Far-right voters are distinguished by their discontent with the democratic system and political elites, following the pattern of what others have referred to as 'protest voters'. Meanwhile, centrist and eclectic voters embody the profile of 'critical citizens', who support the democratic system but are dissatisfied with its current functioning. While we see movement parties as a genuine innovation in the internal structuring of party organisations, our study calls into question the utility of this concept when seeking to understand the behaviour of their electorate. We emphasise the importance of recognising the diverse motivations behind movement party support, enriching our understanding of the changing dynamics of party politics in Europe.

Dilemmas of recognition and redistribution: Constituting intersectional subjects of inclusion in migrant support work

AbstractIn this study, I explore how the subject of inclusion is constituted as intersectional in the organizational discursive practices of a civil society organization promoting migrant and refugee inclusion. Drawing on Crenshaw's notion of political intersectionality and Fraser's politics of recognition and redistribution, I analyze the political dimension of an inclusion project by showing how intersectional categories are connected to differentiated struggles and strategies of inclusion. The ethnographic study illustrates how two subject positions are constituted as being underpinned by either the logic of recognition or redistribution. Moreover, the findings show how the two strategies interact, revealing the dynamics of privilege and disadvantage at play in the inclusion project. The paper contributes to critical studies on inclusion and intersectionality in organizational contexts by extending our understanding of power dynamics and tensions as integral parts of the intersectional approach.

Makijaveli o arte dello stato

In his extraordinary study From Politics to Reason of State, Professor Maurizio Viroli (1992) points out the moment when the ancient notion of politics was replaced with the Renaissance and modern understanding of the reason of state. What was left out of the research was the fact that the political theory register introduced a new term which explains this transition and derogation from the classical notion of politics. The Machiavellian term arte dello stato, describing actions of agents of politics, represents a revolutionary innovation, and this is the process whose development I wish to address in this paper, as well as to explain what it means. Finally, with regard to the historical context, I aim to show that it is precisely the practice of political agents of the time that Machiavelli used to frame the new idea.

Hannah Arendt’s Notion of Trespassing

Hannah Arendt is associated with a strong distinction between guilt and responsibility: Whereas she insists that guilt is strictly personal, she advances a vicarious notion of collective political responsibility without guilt. Yet Arendt also proposes a political concept of forgiveness—which yields the critical question: Does a political concept of forgiveness not presuppose a political concept of guilt? Arendtian forgiveness addresses what Arendt terms trespassing. Scrutinizing her notion of trespassing and how it is situated within her theory of political action, I ponder whether Arendt, in effect, offers a political concept of guilt. I argue that while trespassing is clearly a political notion, it cannot be labelled guilt. Rather, trespassing refers to a purely causal responsibility without blame, and to a social-ontological condition of non-sovereignty and fallibility inherent in political interaction. The non-blameworthiness of trespassing implies that Arendt’s oft-cited concept of forgiveness resembles what is usually categorized as excuse.

Public opinion: a space or a scene? - a debate between Habermas and Rancière on this educational and political notion

Resumé Cet article discute les différences entre les concepts d’«espace public» et «scène publique» à partir du débat entre Jürgen Habermas et Jacques Rancière sur ce qui caractèrise la politique. L’opinion publique relève-t-elle toujours d’un ordre d’une rationalité politique où un sujet expose son opinion à l’épreuve des autres, pour les convaincre? Le maintien de cet espace public est-il alors une question d’éclaircissement? Pour réflechir sur cette question, nous chercherons à voir comment cet espace public s’est caracterisé pour les deux auteurs. Avec le premier, nous verrons historiquement cette caracterisation, et quel y a été le rôle de la médiatisation. Avec le deuxième, nous essayerons de voir dans quelle mesure cet espace public n’est qu’un espace de scènes, d’une scène politique; et quel en est le sens. On se demande si le philosophe allemand, aujourd'hui, à l'ère des nouveaux médias, voudrait-il mieux distendre cet espace public au point de permettre de distinguer un espace public «a-critique» (un espace de commentaires et autre interactions) d’un espace public critique? Dans ce cas, que resterait-il de ce «coup» conceptuel? On pense qu’il y a dejà des élements aujourd’hui pour considérer qu’un espace, même s’il est «public», de cent quarente et quelques signes sur Twitter, ou de quelques paragraphes pour des commentaires sur Facebook, ne nous garantit pas nécessairement un perfectionnement de la démocratie, une proximité des intérêts généraux. Peut-être que la définition de cet espace comme un espace de scènes, comme le veut Rancière, pourra mieux nous aider à penser qu’un commentaire crée toujours «une démultiplication des personnes». C’est dans la confrontation entre ceus deux perspectives d’analyse que nous cherchons à développer cet article.

Bergson’s Legacy among the Avant-Garde: Intuition, Aesthetics, and Political Ideology

In this article I will examine more closely why exactly Bergson’s philosophy of time and intuition proved so compelling to proponents of anarchist ideology, as interpreted by a key group of artists and activists affiliated with the London-based avant-garde movement known as Vorticism (1914-1918). As I demonstrate Bergson’s thought had special appeal among anarchists more generally because his process-oriented philosophy affirmed that movements’ ideological allegiance to notions of immediacy, affinity and prefigurative politics. Bergson’s philosophy enabled these radicals to reconceptualize ideology in terms of human psychology and social interactions, which in turn empowered the Vorticists’ to integrate art and aesthetics into their multivalent critique of the State. More broadly, this recasting of Bergson’s philosophy from an ideological perspective not only serves to distinguished the avant-gardes’ aesthetics from that of Bergson himself, it marks the crucial difference separating the era of the historical avant-garde from our own day, when Bergson’s thought no longer holds sway among contemporary political movements.