Political Struggle Research Articles

Commoning as Social Struggle

The article provides an empirical insight into urban initiatives that advocate for better urban mobility infrastructures and outlines a theoretical perspective of commoning infrastructures as a terrain for political struggles. Rather than constructing commons as the interplay of methodologically presumed elements (resources, a community of commoners, and their institutions of commoning) it takes a relational perspective on commoning that asks how activists mobilize and relate heterogeneous elements to make urban mobility infrastructures a common political concern. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on mobility activism in Berlin, the second part of the article illustrates such a relational perspective and presents three modes of commoning. To achieve what is called “mobility transition” (i. e. more sustainable and equitable urban mobility infrastructures), activists rely on mobilizations of knowledge, space, and affect.

What Would Sakharov Say? The Americanization of Andrei Sakharov

During the 1970s and 1980s, American scientists rallied to defend Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist punished for his advocacy of human rights. In the United States, Americans of all political persuasions admired Sakharov’s courage, though they expressed it in different ways. To some, his life inspired a pursuit of social change, while others saw his plight as confirmation of the evils of Soviet communism. More than anything, though, Sakharov’s moral authority was a highly sought and politically useful prize. Scholars assessing the campaign to save Sakharov have noted divisions within the movement over effort and tactics, but as this paper argues, the movement was, during Sakharov's life and after, a political struggle among various Americans groups to claim his mantle as their own.

Framing Pro-Palestine Protests: A Comparative Analysis of News Coverage by The Guardian and USA Today

This study examines the framing strategies employed by The Guardian and USA Today in their coverage of the pro-Palestine protests in American universities during April and May 2024. Accordingly, the corpus comprises 213 news texts, with The Guardian contributing 106 articles and USA Today contributing 107 articles from April 17 to May 17, 2024. The research identifies and contrasts the dominant frames used by these two newspapers by conducting a framing content analysis on the selected news articles. The Guardian frequently utilizes conflict and adversarial frames, emphasizing university-wide ideological and political struggles. Conversely, USA Today focuses on broader political confrontations and administrative accountability, often highlighting institutional responses and governance issues. The analysis process is guided by framing theory to reveal how news representations influence public perception and interpretation and media agenda-setting theory to explore how media news coverage prioritizes specific issues within the same event. The findings underscore the decisive role of media framing in shaping public opinion and priorities, particularly in the context of global and political issues.

Durkheim’s Empire: The Concept of Solidarity and Its Colonial Dimension

This article challenges prevailing national interpretations of solidarity by examining its colonial dimensions. Employing the Durkheimian school as a historical lens, I demonstrate how the colonial context during the Third Republic shaped the emergence and application of solidarity as a scientific concept. Informed by colonial ethnographies, solidarity was not merely a sociological self-description within European nations; it also formed part of political agendas beyond Europe. I illustrate how Durkheim’s concept was utilized to enhance scientific understanding of colonized societies, aiding French colonial administrators in promoting developmentalist reforms. As national models extended internationally, solidarity evolved from social cohesion to economic integration within the international legal order. This progression toward modern solidarity—and the injustices it entailed—appeared inevitable, masking political struggles for self-determination. By critically recontextualizing solidarity, this analysis contributes to contemporary political theory debates, demonstrating its application in supporting an inclusive legal-economic agenda while failing to systematically confront colonial injustices.

Radicalising hope to resist the neoliberalisation of social work

The influence of neoliberalism is taken for granted in social work and has increasingly shaped social work practice, research and education. This article examines hope in social work and the importance of radically theorising hope to challenge the neoliberalisation of social work. Social work has a dual function that both resists and accommodates neoliberal agendas. Hope is a multidimensional concept. Hope is predominantly individualised in social work, but there are also radical and critical notions of hope that align with the broader political struggles of social work. Consistent with ethics of social justice, this article advocates for broadening the use of hope in social work to incorporate radical and critical hope in social work practice, research and education.

The Promise of Resistance: A New Lens for Climate Change Adaptation Research and Practice

ABSTRACTOver the years, thousands of climate change adaptation projects have been implemented globally. While there has been substantial scholarship on the extent and nature of adaptation efforts, fewer studies have examined why and how adaptation projects are being resisted. An analysis of resistance to adaptation offers critical insights to scholars and practitioners by recognizing the contentious nature of adaptation pathways and highlighting alternative visions for adaptation. Drawing on 20 case studies identified through a systematic review of the literature, we identify nine insights for research and practice. First, there is little literature on resistance to adaptation, suggesting that it is being underreported. Second, resistance to adaptation is not an anomaly, spanning sectors, actors, and geographies. Third, resistance to adaptation initiatives often has little to do with climate change skepticism. Fourth, the modes and outcomes of resistance are creative and diverse. Fifth, the state plays a critical, but not uniform, role in adaptation and thus resistance. Sixth, formal participation mechanisms can accommodate, neutralize, or facilitate resistance to adaptation. Seventh, the diverse goals of resistance reflect the multiplicity of imagined adaptation futures. Eighth, resistance is generative of material outcomes and novel subjectivities. Ninth, resistance can be costly, fracturing, and ineffective. This review highlights the need to further investigate resistance to climate change adaptation, which should be seen as a site of political struggle between different conceptions of what adaptation is and should be. It also provides insights for identifying maladaptation and pathways toward more emancipative forms of adaptation.

What Roles Do Women Have in the Political Worlds in Hamlet and Macbeth?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the important role of female characters in the political world in William Shakespeare’s tragedies Hamlet and Macbeth. By analyzing Queen Gertrude, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and the three witches, the paper reveals the influence of women in the political realm and the limitations they face. Centering on Hamlet, the essay begins by analysing Gertrude’s influence on the Danish political landscape and Ophelia’s dilemma in the struggle for male power. The article then turns to Macbeth to explore how Lady Macbeth’s ambitions for power and the witches’ supernatural abilities influence Macbeth’s political decisions. The article points out that despite their political potential and influence, these female characters remain constrained by patriarchy and are often seen as tools in the male power struggle. Finally, the essay summarises the common themes and differences between the female characters in Hamlet and Macbeth, and reflects on the place of women in the political world and the challenges they face. Through an in-depth analysis of female characters in Shakespeare’s works, this thesis aims to deepen the understanding of women’s experiences in political struggles, as well as their efforts to attain power and self-actualization in a patriarchal society.

Strategic Implications of Legal Constitution: Between Necessity and Contingency

Abstract This article offers a novel perspective on the ‘constitutive role’ of law and discusses the contribution that such a perspective can make to our understanding of law’s potential role in radical political struggles. It suggests that a distinction should be drawn between the necessary dimension of law’s constitutive role—the fact that law is one of capitalism’s necessary power relations—and the contingent dimension of that role—the historically variant ways in which those relations have been institutionalised, and the legal form of power given concrete expression. The article shows how this distinction can help refocus questions about the role of law in radical political struggles and can help inform strategic decisions about whether, when and how law might be mobilised in the context of such struggles, including how law might be used in explicitly subversive ways.

Social Crisis and Islamist Transformation: Iraq’s Sadrism Through Bourdieu’s Homology

Abstract This article theorizes Islamist transformations by mapping the evolution of Sadrism in contemporary Iraq through a period of state collapse, war, and political consolidation. Using Pierre Bourdieu, this perspective emphasizes how field-based crises can synchronize and amplify homological relations between the deep-lying structures which differentiate religious from political spheres of Islamist activity. The article identifies these homological processes and structures and explains how they have patterned underlying morphologies of Sadrist politics. This differs from existing literature on Islamist movements where religion has often been contextualized in terms of material social conditions, or priority ascribed to political struggles and structures and emphasis placed on surface-level symbolic practices. By contrast, a Bourdieusian lens provides a theoretically robust approach to study the relationship between religion and politics, and an evaluative framework for Islamist transformations which is less normative than some alternatives and more generalizable beyond the context of Islamism and Islam.

The Green Party of the United States: Establishment and Entry into Big Politics

The article considers the long and complicated history of the Green Party in the United States (from 1984 to 2001), as well as its further political role as a «third party» – up to the establishment of the Green New Deal as its main ideological and election platform for the 2012 presidential elections. This topic is of interest due to the fact that, amid the global relevance of «green» political and economic agenda in the 21st century, the environmental parties are meant to play a special role – let alone in the country that claims leadership in the field of environmental (primarily, climate) policy. In this context, the situation that the Green Party in the United States is in a secondary position and does not have a decisive influence on real politics, looks all the more illogical. The specifics of the American Greens’ political strategy and tactics are analyzed, which allowed to reach a new level of political struggle as an alternative and oppositional political force towards both establishment parties – the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Nevertheless, the Democrats led by President J. Biden have intercepted the Green Party’s preelection program and won the 2020 elections with it. This testifies to strategic mistakes made by the American Greens and casts doubt on their future political fate.

The Donald Trump Factor and US-Ukrainian Relations (2017-2020): From Strategic Friendship to Cold Partnership

This article analyses the dynamics of relations between Ukraine and the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump, covering the approaches of the parties to bilateral cooperation, key events and issues. It describes in detail the main features of Washington’s policy towards Ukraine during this period, the factors that shaped it and the reasons for any contradictions involved. It is noted that the course of the Trump administration’s foreign policy towards Ukraine has been shaped by three factors: strong pressure from Congress, contradictions between the president and his foreign policy team, and public suspicions of collusion between Trump’s entourage and the Kremlin in the 2016 US presidential election, which was accompanied by a bitter domestic political struggle. With no room for manoeuvre in such circumstances, the Trump administration chose the safest course of action – to continue the policy of the Obama administration with certain tactical changes designed to demonstrate a more decisive stance than its predecessor. These involved a significant increase in economic and military assistance to Ukraine, including the provision of lethal weapons and the appointment of Kurt Volker as US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. Based on extensive empirical evidence, this paper also highlights the progress made and achievements with regard to cooperation in four areas that made up the Ukrainian-US relations agenda during the period covered: political dialogue, security, energy projects and the fight against corruption. The author shows that the contradictory nature of US policy towards Ukraine under Trump comprised a combination of a significant increase in military assistance and a decrease in the intensity of high-level political contacts.

Race and authenticity in Argentine comics, 1950s–1970s: Indigenous peoples, mestizos, and white settlers on the frontier

ABSTRACT This article analyses several Argentine comics published between the 1950s and 1970s that depict the racialised hinterlands of state expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether set in Argentina or the US, these comics are often celebrated as works that dismantle traditional dichotomies found in comics (e.g. white heroes vs. Indigenous villains). Referring to their use of the archive, of more nuanced Indigenous characters, and even of narratives constructed from “an Indigenous worldview”, comics creators are seen to disrupt stereotypical depictions of race. Positioning the works within a history of race in Argentina and political struggles over its rural interior, I unpack the creators’ claims to “authenticity” to set out an alternative reading of Indigeneity, mestizaje, and whiteness in these comics. I argue that this corpus ultimately preserves existing racial hierarchies by promoting figures of whiteness who support white settlerism in the name of modernisation and progress.

Maailman terveysjärjestön legitimiteetti ja legitimiteettikriisit COVID-19-pandemian valossa

The legitimacy of the World Health Organization in light of the COVID-19 pandemic This article provides an overview of the legitimacy and the legitimacy crises of the World Health Organization (WHO). During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the era of social media, WHO’s legitimacy crisis has appeared to be historically strong. Based on previous quantitative and qualitative research, the article assesses factors influencing the legitimacy of the WHO. The article identifies the most significant legitimacy crises of the WHO, and examines the similarities and differences between the crises. The legitimacy crises of the WHO are intertwined with infectious disease epidemics. In these situations, the WHO, with its measures and recommendations, becomes under public scrutiny due to increased media visibility. Moreover, the WHO gets merged into international and national political struggles. With the COVID-19 pandemic, research on the legitimacy of the WHO is timely and necessary. Through this comprehensive overview of the...

IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF STATE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL VALUES IN UKRAINE

The author of the article reveals the purpose of implementing the international experience of the system of state protection of national values through the prism of two important trends that should be implemented and and enshrined in the practice of state-building processes in modern Ukraine. One of them stipulates that national values are the central core of the national security system security system, they define the triad of ‘values-interests-goals’. The second trend defines the system of creating mechanisms for legislative support of guaranteeing and protecting of national values, which is embodied in the systemic nature of the state policy on national development and is the actual consolidation of the civilisational civilisational choice of the Ukrainian nation at the level of legal acts. The purpose of the article is to analyse practical aspects of implementation of the state mechanisms for protection of national values in foreign countries and their implementation in the Ukrainian State. The author emphasises that national values of of modern Ukraine should not be subject to political bargaining, speculation, etc. They are are always an element of political struggle. Without this, political processes are impossible, and therefore, national values should be defined and prohibited for political speculation on them, which, by the way, requires the development of an institution of for their criminal law protection; and - to have its own system of mechanisms of legislative protection. It is determined that the first step towards the implementation of the experience of foreign countries in protecting national values should be the introduction of an all-Ukrainian analytical study of the system of national values. It should should be based on long-term and medium-term forecasts of domestic development and the development of the system of world politics, its specific regional and functional subsystems. This means that the full potential of national research institutes in the field of public opinion, civil society, and sociological research should be used to society, and sociological research should be directed within the framework of a single state policy to study and define national values.

The Sabinus Code: A Contribution to the Discussion on Political Agitation on Roman Republican Coins

The article analyses the iconography of the denarii bearing the scene of the Punishment of Tarpeia, issued by L. Titurius Sabinus during the Social War, re-examines its previous interpretations and offers a new one, linking it with the internal political struggle between the Optimate faction related to the tribune of the plebs M. Livius Drusus and their opponents. The author suggests that the figure of the notorious traitress was used intentionally, in terms of the political struggle against Drusus himself or his former partisans who had been found guilty of parricide and exiled under the Lex Varia, in order to prevent them from returning to Rome.

Mediating Palestine: Representation, Mobilization, and Experimentation

This special issue is inspired by the life of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by an Israeli soldier in Jenin in May 2022. It was compiled during the deadliest time for journalists anywhere in the last three decades. During its ongoing war on Gaza, Israel has killed well over one hundred Palestinian journalists and media workers. The contributions to this volume address how diverse media forms shape and express Palestinian lifeworlds and politics. Palestinians practice media—through documentary production, photography, art, animation, social media, and journalism—to defy the media stereotypes that seek to reduce them to perpetrators or victims, and to mobilize imagination for liberation. By attending to the materialities and conditions of production of everyday media forms as part of broader political and social struggles, this special issue seeks to amplify and contextualize Palestinian media work as Palestinians strive to survive and flourish in the midst of ongoing Nakba.

A Study on the Activating Tradition and the Will to Practice in the LiuTao

LiuTao is one of the WuJingQiShu compiled during the Yuanfeng reign of Emperor Shenzong of the late BeiSong Dynasty (1078-1085), which delineated the vertical and horizontal aspects of East Asian military science. Throughout the history of East Asia in this period, library science and bibliography, as official books, formed a huge collection. At the end of the reign of Emperor Shenzong, due to the failure and death of WangAnshi's reform, this was a historical period that could predict the trend of imperial power in the reigns of Emperor Zhezong and Emperor Huizong for more than 40 years. It also foreshadowed a large-scale war, as the capital of the BeiSong Dynasty was relocated to Hangzhou in the NanSong Dynasty (today) due to political struggles and chaos during the war. In addition, the political, social, historical, religious, linguistic, artistic and other cultural areas in this period, in addition to the geopolitical factors in East Asia, also through the textual research of various scholars in the ChunQiuZhanGuo periods, indicate the areas where ancient customs [易俗] can change the development of knowledge and information in the Middle Ages. The distribution and staging of the gains and losses in history, regional, and sociology during the ChunQiuZhanGuo periods have played a role in the development of human civilization and the spirit of war and political humanism in the common track. This is both an economic and moral, legal and educational issue, and also lies in rediscovering the ‘TaoHai (韬海)’ of hegemonic victory to inquiry the Probability variable. In order to investigate the outcome of the ‘Wuyi (无疑)’ military expert hegemony, specifically criticized the traditional activation of military politics based on probability variables and the differences in mercenary techniques and utilitarian positions reflected in the outbreak of war.

RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE IN CHANGING INDONESIA: The Political Struggle and Movement of Hidayatullah

This article seeks to endeavors and strategies of an Islamic organization, Hidayatullah, to survive in changing political regimes in the New Order to Reformation period of Indonesia. It was established as an Islamic educational and dakwah (Islamic proselytizing) institution in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, in 1973. Despite socio-political changes in the country, it has expanded to several provinces in Indonesia which transformed it to become the largest Islamic educational institution with 402 branches of Islamic schools. The organization focuses its activities on Islamic education and dakwah through various ways including printed media such as Suara Hidayatullah magazine, distributed weekly to its branches, mosques, and schools. Based on a literature review of Suara Hidayatullah magazine and interviews with Hidayatullah prominent figures, this article delves into the struggles and movement of Hidayatullah through its dynamics and transformation in socio-political changes in Indonesia. This article argued that in political dynamics and transformation within Hidayatullah organization show the resistance and resilience to survive in the socio-political crisis of Suharto’s New Order era (1966-1998), which discriminated against Islam as a political ideology and in the aftermath of reformation. One of the strategies to comply with the political repressions is to declare Hidayatullah as an Islamic organization like Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah in 2000. This transformation process proves Hidayatullah’s strategic foresight and adaptability in socio-cultural and political changes.

Shahids and martyrs: Conflicting national narratives and places of memory in Kosovo

Kosovo Field (Kosovo Polje), the core region of the newly independent Kosovo, experienced several key historical events, each of which left important memories in the space. As political control over territory changed, different memories connected to the area became stronger, while others were pushed into the background. The first battle of Kosovo (1389) and the death of their ruler Lazar, is a key event in Serbian history, identified through spectacular landmarks in the region. Connected to this event, Turkish monuments also exist, commemorating the death of the martyr Sultan Murad I. Following independence, memorials of Albanian fighters started mushrooming as a core element of Kosovar identity building, with the martyrdom of the “legendary commander” Adem Jashari being central to this emblematic memory project. All three nations have an “official” martyr connected to the space, around which different nation-building narratives have been constructed. As the struggle over the control and influence of the region continues, so does the competition of different memories and memorials. Territorialisation and de-territorialisation of memories are ongoing projects in the country by the three nations, linked to competing nation-buildings and political power struggles.

Revolutionary Papers

Abstract Periodicals played a key role in the making of left, anticolonial, and anti-imperial institutions, politics, and cultures in the global south. This issue of Radical History Review investigates how journals operated as a device for the creation and reproduction of counterhegemonic formations, often under conditions of extreme repression and neglect. This article builds on a multiyear project entitled Revolutionary Papers, as well as the contributions to this issue, to lay out the conceptual and political groundwork for examining these periodicals and introduce our collective commitment to mobilize them as part of political struggles today. The article expands the definition of the periodical, the revolutionary, and the global south and argues that these materials offer an alternate method for studying and practicing left anticolonialism. It proposes an analytical approach to periodicals that allows one to unpack the place of the journal in building left, anticolonial institutions, politics, and cultures, and opens up the possibility of mobilizing these journals as pedagogical material in education and movement contexts.