Political Differences Research Articles

Whither Difference, Whither Recognition? Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference Revisited

Whither Difference, Whither Recognition? Iris Marion Young’s <i>Justice and the Politics of Difference</i> Revisited

Identity politics and the politics of difference: critical transformations in contemporary thought

This article explores the relationship between identity politics and the politics of difference, focusing especially on the tensions that characterise this relationship within progressive theories and political discourses, and on their implications. The development of the concepts of identity and difference, as well as their limits and possibilities, are examined in relation to several theorists: Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Cornel West and Judith Butler. This is followed by a discussion of Fromm’s social psychology insofar as it anticipates the growing importance of the concepts of identity and difference within late modern culture, and insofar as it identifies a number of critical concerns around these concepts which remain relevant today.

Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Difference in Popular Romance

Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Difference in Popular Romance

Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire by Marina B. Mogilner (review)

Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire by Marina B. Mogilner (review)

Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Difference in Popular Romance

Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Difference in Popular Romance

Are kinesiology programs oppressive? a content analysis of Canadian university kinesiology curricula and websites

ABSTRACT Institutionalized oppression experienced by marginalized groups is central to post-secondary education and, if left unchallenged, will remain pervasive within academia (Lincoln, Y. S., & Stanley, C. A. (2021). The faces of institutionalized discrimination and systemic oppression in higher education: Uncovering the lived experience of bias and procedural inequity. Qualitative Inquiry, 10778004211026892). Emerging literature that examines discrimination and oppression in kinesiology has focused on the consequences of privileging Western, Eurocentric knowledge and scholarship. (Andrews, D. L., Silk, M., Francombe, J., & Bush, A. (2013). McKinesiology. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35(5), 335–356; Culp, B. (2016). Social justice and the future of higher education kinesiology. Quest (grand Rapids, Mich), 68(3), 271–283; Douglas, D. D., & Halas, J. M. (2013). The wages of whiteness: Confronting the nature of ivory tower racism and the implications for physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 18(4), 453–474; Joseph, J., & Kriger, D. (2021). Towards a decolonizing kinesiology ethics model. Quest (grand Rapids, Mich), 73(2), 192–208; Nachman, J., Joseph, J., & Fusco, C. (2021). ‘What if what the professor knows is not diverse enough for US?’: whiteness in Canadian kinesiology programs. Sport, Education and Society, 1-14). There is, however, limited research that examines how kinesiology curriculum might enable the reproduction of these processes. Thus, this study explores how knowledge is distributed within Canadian university kinesiology curriculum, and how disciplines, faculty members, and students are represented on program websites. We analyzed eight Canadian university kinesiology websites using summative qualitative content analysis (SQCA) and the Five Faces of Oppression (Young, I. M. (1990). "Five Faces of Oppression,” justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press) framework. Overall, programs reproduce Western, scientific, and positivist approaches as the dominant knowledge, maintain racially homogenous faculty demographics, make rhetorical commitments to EDI, and communicate neoliberalism in mission statements. In doing so, these programs (1) privilege white, heteronormative, lean, and able bodies(2) marginalize the experiences of those who deviate from these identitarian positions, and (3) limit the possibilities for transformation towards inclusive kinesiology in Canada. Recommendations are suggested for how curricula might engage with social justice objectives and challenge oppressive systems.

Disability Policy in the Context of Intersectionality, Contemporary Oppressions, and Injustices: Toward a Just Future

This article connects the pillars of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to the complexities of living and dying in the United States. Our argument navigates among the emancipatory intent of ADA and the lives of people whose access to power, emancipation, and transformation are compromised by the historical and contemporary divisions of difference that infuse everyday life. The gaps between the possibilities of public policy, missed opportunities, and current realities create a significant, lasting impact on generations of Americans. While we acknowledge the landmark significance of ADA, we also press the imperative to expand and strengthen its impact. This article is framed in intersectionality, the politics of difference, and the potential of social policy.

The creation of the stranger – the process of recreating immigrants as the Other in Canada’s government-produced texts

ABSTRACT This research analyses textual and visual representations of immigrants in government-produced texts and investigates how such depictions aid in the production of the stranger discourse. How immigrants are discussed and portrayed has an impact on how immigrant populations are perceived and treated in their host countries. By using postcolonial theory and conducting a Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (CDA), we analyse argumentative strategies through which the host and immigrant populations are portrayed, and how the politics of difference is constructed and normalized. We critically evaluate such representations for their discursive functions which contribute to immigrants’ socio-economic marginalization and racialization.

A targeted approach to multiculturalism: The case of the Roma minority in Europe

The article assesses Will Kymlicka’s targeted approach to cultural rights by focusing on the case of the Roma minority in Europe. In Multicultural Odysseys, Kymlicka praises the European management of Roma issues as a promising way to overcome the flaws of the generic approach to cultural rights that dominates European minority rights otherwise. The article intends to evaluate Kymlicka’s statement in two ways : it combines an empirical study of the arguments that justify the institutional targeting of the Roma in the Council of Europe and a normative analysis about the specific type of transnational minority that these populations seem to form. The empirical part of the paper casts doubts on the assumption that cultural recognition matters primarily in the case of the Roma. The normative part of the paper argues that the concept of transnational minority gains more normative consistency when it is understood in terms of political mobilization against racial oppression than when it is justified in terms of cultural recognition. It concludes that Iris M. Young’s “politics of difference” provides a fruitful normative approach to make sense of the Roma’s claims of justice in Europe and that it is as such likely to refine and possibly complete the targeted to approach to multiculturalism.

차이의 정치와 민주주의 - 아이리스 영의 논의를 중심으로 -

이 글의 목적은 아이리스 영(Iris Marion Young)의 차이의 정치에 대한 해명을 시도하 고 그에 관한 비판적 검토를 수행하는데 있다. 영은 기본적으로 사회정의의 관심사가 개인 이 추구하는 좋은 삶의 가치들을 각자 자유롭게 실현해 나가는데 필요한 사회 구조와 체계 를 마련하는데 있어야 한다고 생각한다. 영은 한 사회가 개인의 권리와 자유에 대한 동등 한 고려와 존중을 토대로 하는 정의의 원칙에 따라 개인과 집단의 행동을 규정하는 사회의 기본구조에 대한 도덕적 판단을 수행하는 것만으로는 정의로운 사회를 실현할 수 없다고 본다. 왜냐하면 영은 그러한 분배 지향적 정의론은 사회에 깊숙이 고착화된 구조적 부정의 의 문제를 직접적으로 다룰 수 없다고 생각하기 때문이다. 영은 이런 생각을 “정의관은 분배에 초점을 맞추기보다는 지배와 억압이라는 개념에서 시작해야 한다.”고 표현한다. 따라서 영은 분배 지향적 정의론의 한계를 극복하기 위해 사회에 존재하는 구조적 부정의 의 면면들을 드러내는 동시에 그런 구조적 부정의를 해결해나갈 수 있는 실천적 방법론을 모색한다. 영에게 있어 정의로운 사회는 개인이 자신의 고유성과 개별성을 자유롭게 표현 하고 의견을 제시할 수 있는 사회, 억압과 지배가 없는 사회다. 영이 볼 때 우리가 그런 사 회로 나아가기 위해 추구해야할 정치는 바로 차이의 정치다. 우리는 먼저 영이 분배 지향 적 정의론에 대해 갖는 불만이 무엇인지 확인한 후에 그녀가 추구하는 정의론과 차이의 정 치가 무엇인지 살펴볼 것이다. 이어서 차이의 정치를 비판적으로 검토하고 그 의의와 한계 를 정리하고자 한다. 결론에서는 아이리스 영의 차이의 정치는 억압과 지배를 양산하는 사 회 구조를 허물고 공론장에 타자성을 수용할 수 있는 다원주의 정치질서의 한 형태를 보여 준다고 평가할 것이다. 동시에 그러한 정치는 좋은 삶과 정의에 대한 문제들을 구분하지 않는 방식을 채택하면서 현존하는 질서의 틀을 수정하고 확장해나갈 때 차이의 인정을 통 한 구조적 부정의의 해체와 진정한 자유와 해방이라는 정의의 이념에 다가설 수 있다고 주 장할 것이다.

The Anthropology of Enthnationalism: The Politics of Difference

Along with the emergence of Maoist-insurgency in Nepal ethnic awareness pervaded through the society which advanced to the form of movement even it delivered a sharp stroke at the threshold of Constitutional assembly and till it is under tide passion. The project of nation state (re)structuring of federal Nepal is on the progress. This enterprise essentially demands for some common consensus in understanding the contested notions behind the politics of identity versus difference vis-a-vis ethnic nationalism or a liberal concept of civic state before venturing the most controversial debate in searching the federal-strands in order to form a consolidated nation state. Constitutional assembly and the major political parties found largely engaged with talking about people’s ethnicity, their culture and languages as the major constructive principles pivoting around at which the federal nations were conceived. While the constitution of Nepal was announced without identification of its federal provinces because of these undercurrent emotions.&#x0D; Ethnic classifications are rather arbitrary, they are changing over time - today's ethnicities are yesterday’s races, and they are different in different countries. While the dubiety on those dimensions to the extent of their nature of fluidity and situational applicability may supply sufficient ground for a clear-cut demarcation of a territorial boundary for any ethnic groups in Nepal. It is equally important to remind to this detail that how the globalized forces of hybridization is taking place. Hybridization is considered a powerful blurring process through which the elements of ethnicity, identity and purity with their boundary limitation becomes indistinct. Further, transnational and supranational context of inescapable globalized processes are of the great significant domains to this concern too.&#x0D; In this regard, rendering with some common conceptual references of intellectually satisfying literatures, this paper aims to have recourse in searching common unifying and embracing dimensions of an integral nationalism, a collective overarching Nepalese identity woven within a common national sovereignty through which all the differences and commonalities can be shared, practiced and recognized so that may create pressure to sublimate bare political yearnings and therefore, pleads for the people in public-spheres and the social scientists, intellectuals to broach and share their views.

Pleasurable surfing is possible: ethnographic insights into the constructive sociation choices behind meaningful nothingness

ABSTRACT This article explores the meaningful nothingness between conflict and hedonism experienced by most surfers. It explains how meaningful nothingness is achieved through constructive individual and collective sociation choices. These choices, exemplified through acts of omission and commission, inform mutually beneficial social forms where conflict is mundanely resolved or avoided by diverse social types. For the past 60 years, scholars have employed interpretations of Marx’s conflict theory to focus on surfing’s extremes by emphasising objective inequities and explaining how marginalised social types are confronted by the deviant in a power struggle for limited resources. The originality of this article is in its use of Simmel’s conflict theory and Scott’s sociology of nothing as a balanced framework to illuminate the unnoticed and taken-for-granted practices and processes that receive little analytical recognition but are fundamental to pleasurable surfing for all. Drawing on data from a 20-year ethnography of global surfing, findings reveal how constructive sociation choices are learned and employed by surfers to ensure that either triadic closure or sociability is the tribe’s final form. The significance of this article is that it presents an insight into how a diverse majority of surfers choose meaningful nothingness over the politics of difference.

Scenes of Access, Politics of Difference

Abstract Since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, museum reformers have struggled to comply with the federal codes for accessibility. This essay accounts for the ambitions and limitations of these debates around access in the museum that were caught in the double bind between public expectation and private market forces, ultimately giving rise to a particular type of bottom-up reform organized around parametric gradients and attitudinal shifts. It does so by juxtaposing manuals for museum educators from the 1990s with artworks by New York City–based artists such as Carolyn Lazard, Jordan Lord, and Park McArthur who all worked with the incorporation of access into their artistic practice during the 2010s. The essay argues that these artistic practices force us to decouple the teaching of access from its narrow focus on shifting individual attitudes and instead belabor the form and content of stories about structural conditions.

Sustainability Knowledge Politics: Southeast Asia, Europe and the Transregional History of Palm Oil Sustainability Research

Abstract So far, the field of sustainability history has insufficiently addressed the tricky politics of academic sustainability knowledge making. In response, this paper studies how scientific research on palm oil sustainability, when defining sustainability problems and solutions, enacted a postcolonial politics of difference between Southeast Asia and Europe. Iterating between quantitative database queries (2,500+ sources) and close reading, we found that voices of scientists from both regions were amply represented in palm oil sustainability research, but presented different types of narratives. Research originating from Southeast Asia predominantly foregrounded situated problems originating, experienced and to be redressed within the region itself. By contrast, diverse strands of research led by scholars from Europe addressed universalised global sustainability problems for humanity, notably global deforestation and climate change. This research framed palm oil farmers in Southeast Asia as responsible for causing and solving such problems while attributing to European actors the responsibility of ensuring Southeast Asian actors' compliance with global sustainability standards through certification schemes. Critically, European actors were thereby acquitted of their own historical and future responsibilities, even though the latter had long deforested their own territories and contributed significantly more to climate change, played a pivotal role in establishing palm oil cultivation and trade, and constituted leading importers of soy in the twentieth century. To open up for more equitable and inclusive future sustainability imaginaries, we encourage historical research that studies, situates and unpacks diverse sustainability knowledges and narratives across the globe in a symmetrical manner.

Weaponizing reproductive rights: a mixed-method analysis of White nationalists’ discussion of abortions online

ABSTRACT According to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, nonwhites, globalists and elites are plotting to eliminate the white race and its dominance through anti-white policies and increased immigration. In that context, abortion among white women is perceived by white nationalists (WN) as a betrayal of their ‘biological’ and ‘traditional’ gender role – procreation of white babies. While WN condemn abortion among white women as a murderous sin, at times they encourage the practice among nonwhites to solve demographic threats to white dominance. In this study, we use mixed methods, combining unsupervised machine learning with close textual analysis of 30,725 posts including the term ‘abortion’ published on the WN website Stormfront between 2001 and 2017. We identify three broad themes: White genocide, focused on the conspiracy theory and detailing the active actors in its alleged execution; political, focused on political agendas and laws; and WN reproductive reasoning, articulating and justifying the contradiction between supporting abortion for nonwhites but not for whites via politics of difference that emphasize nonwhites’ supposed inferior morality. We discuss WN’s unique and explicitly racist discourse around a medical topic like abortion, a staple of the conservative and religious right for decades, and how it is used to alleviate their cognitive dissonance resulting from their dual-stance on abortion. Such discourse could be harnessed to recruit members into the movement and normalize extreme, racist ideologies.

Constructing Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as a radically transformative policy in South Africa: government v corporate discourse

This paper investigates how the South African government and mining corporations have appropriated anti-apartheid and anti-colonial discourses to legitimise Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as a radically transformative policy without being transformative in conception, discourse, or action. There is a presumption in academic circles that BEE is a panacea for radically transforming historical, structural, and unequal power relations in South Africa. This article rejects this presumption by demonstrating how the conception and discourse of BEE have ignored these power relations and their underlying political economic structures of apartheid capitalism even before the policy was implemented or enforced by the government. Using [Young, Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press] critique of the distributive paradigm of justice, and employing [Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press] three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this article argues that the government and mining corporations present BEE as a new measure of radical transformation while simultaneously reducing this transformation to the micro concept of economic participation, focusing on numbers, representation, and targets rather than on historical, structural, and unequal power relations. As a result, the government and these corporations have reinforced and maintained these power relations while employing the discourse of BEE to masquerade as advancing their transformation. The crux is that BEE encourages Black people to operate within economically and institutionally oppressive structures which amplify the conditions they purport to be challenging.

Traits of Womanist in Unigwe’s Night Dancer: Complementarity versus Culture

Presentations of couples as supportive are a foregrounding motif in Chika Unigwe's Night Dancer. This traditional notion is still very topical especially in ensuring that the union lasts as long as they are alive. However, the female still believe that the paramount duty of the male is family provision while the female is a care provider. Nevertheless, there is a paradigm shift, such that, resources are harnessed together to sustain the family due to economic pressure. This paper examines some negative strains of culture in marriages and how the role complementarity plays in marriage, especially in a culture where tradition emphasizes male dominance. The outcome is the ensuing interrogation of the universalizing qualities of the womanist ideology with its tenet of complementarity. This equally questions the concept of equality at the long run. Therefore, when the partners contribute financially, will the issue of dominance and superiority in marriage not be questioned? This paper concludes with the notion that despite the politics of difference that endeavours to weaken women's liberation, womanist theory is still a panacea to understanding the mindset of the women via their experiences. This will equally distinct reality from stereotypes.

Alberto Cardín, yo mismo: transatlantic essayism and psychoanalysis in Como si nada (1981)

ABSTRACT Spanish cultural history has relegated Alberto Cardín to oblivion due to his uncomfortable intellectual stance. Cardín’s marginal placement illuminates and delineates the Transition’s cultural conflicts: champions of transitional dissent faced being either excluded entirely or incorporated into the hegemonic logics of consensus. In Como si nada (1981), Cardín crafts an intransigent and polemical essay that openly challenges the Transition’s political and cultural institutionalization. His intellectual ties with Argentine writer Oscar Masotta allow us to explore the transatlantic links between psychoanalysis and literature during the Transition. Like Masotta’s essay “Roberto Arlt, yo mismo” (1965), Como si nada turns Lacanian psychoanalysis into a self-reflexive interrogation of Spanish intellectuals’ conditions of enunciation. On the one hand, Cardín stresses how the cultural field has been institutionalized and reconfigured. On the other, he critiques the textual forms that were consolidating media intellectuals’ prestige. Como si nada translates the essay form into a poetics and politics of differences, creating a discursive stronghold capable of confronting any consensual imperative. Cardín’s theoretical standpoint questions which intellectual models come with democracy, which public figures and textual forms obtain recognition and what the cost of cultural institutionalization may be.

What Kind of Identity is Partisan Identity? “Social” versus “Political” Partisanship in Divided Democracies

Many scholars blame partisan polarization for collapsing politics into social life. But these diagnoses lack any sophisticated theoretical basis for distinguishing “social” from “political” forms of identity. This article offers such a framework, providing better grounding for evaluating polarization. Drawing on work on the politics of difference, I first argue that the harms of polarized partisanship mirror long-standing criticisms of essentialist social identities, including the constriction of agency and reduction of compromise. I then show how a more political form of partisan identity could not only mitigate these concerns but also positively contribute to democracy through the promotion of civic republican ideals of active citizenship. I conceptualize partisan identity between the view of the social-identity literature (partisanship as cultural identity) and an idealizing tendency within some recent normative views (partisanship without identity), offering a novel evaluation of polarization and a conceptual map useful for both empirical and normative scholars.

Unmasking imperial history: Emotional Empire, Violent Politics of Difference, and Independence Movements in the Name of Autonomy

Unmasking imperial history: Emotional Empire, Violent Politics of Difference, and Independence Movements in the Name of Autonomy