Context Of Repression Research Articles

Care as survival and resistance for precarious lives

AbstractWidespread economic and social precarity has made care essential to sustain life while simultaneously unremarkable due to its ubiquity. Failure to attend to care inadvertently accepts associated inequalities and ignores the potential for resistance. I explore in this paper the potential for anthropological investigations of care to overturn assumptions of care as ordinary amid precarity. Drawing on transdisciplinary anthropological, feminist, and disability studies scholarship on care and my own ethnographic work with people with disabilities and their family caregivers in Appalachian Kentucky, I argue care is best characterized as an expansive conceptual frame to understand and contest conditions of protracted precarity. Moving beyond assumptions of care and caregiving as ordinary, I theorize care as a relational, moral, and practical act; situate care within the context of neoliberalism, inequality, and repression; and recognize the persistence of resistance enacted through care practices to center efforts for justice. Care as a focus of feminist scholarship and practice must move beyond oppression. Care is an everyday means for interdependent resistance amid the conditions of precarity, offering vital recognition of personhood and worth for precarious lives. Caring labor sustains life when industrial capitalism cannot. Care persists as a way to survive and thrive amid injustice.

Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s experiment in film pedagogy

ABSTRACT This article examines a little-known experiment in film pedagogy by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, before the beginning of the German-Soviet war (1941–1945, called ‘Great Patriotic War’ in the Soviet Union), in addition to shooting his own films, Dovzhenko attempted to organise and conduct comprehensive training of film production personnel directly on site, at the Kyiv Film Factory (Kyiv Film Studio of Feature Films, now Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio of Feature Films). In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the Party administrative apparatus strictly controlled not only the filming and distribution of films, but also the training of future personnel for film production: film directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, film actors, etc. Dovzhenko’s experiment in film pedagogy made a distinct contribution to nurturing Ukrainian actors for sound-era cinema, fluent in Ukrainian and immersed in Ukrainian culture, despite the wider context of Soviet repression, especially in Ukraine. The article uses sources from a number of archives in Ukraine and Russia, memoirs and rare period publications to reconstruct this episode in Dovzhenko’s career and grant an insight into his pedagogical practice and approach to film acting.

'Not a party to this crime': The reciprocal constitution of identity and morality by signatories of the Academics for Peace petition in Turkey.

In this paper, we examine how social identity, moral obligation and the relationship between the two shaped support for the 2016 Academics for Peace petition in Turkey. We examine the pre-trial statements of nine defendants charged for signing the petition and appearing in court on the same day in December 2018. We first conduct an inductive thematic analysis on one statement, and then, using the themes from this analysis, we conducted a deductive thematic analysis on the remaining eight statements. In line with the existing studies, we find considerable evidence that social identity and moral obligation are invoked as key reasons for signing in this highly repressive context. However, rather than these being separate factors, the two are reciprocally constitutive. That is, social identities define moral obligations and, at the same time, enacting moral obligations defines identity (both the position of the individual in the group and the nature of the group in the world). In discussion, we consider the broader implications of a moralized view of social identities for our understanding of both collective action and social identity processes more generally.

Repression, Interests and Outgroup Attitudes: A Survey Experiment in Post-Coup Myanmar

Can outgroup attitudes improve in a repressive context? Existing literature highlights how shared victimization generated under repression facilitates recategorization of identity boundaries, thereby ameliorating exclusionary attitudes. We propose an alternative pathway through which outgroup attitudes can improve. We argue that individuals update their outgroup attitudes when they perceive outgroups as contributing to a shared goal. Rather than being an identity-based response, we suggest that this cognitive process involves instrumental considerations. We evaluate this theory using a web-based survey experiment carried out in post-coup Myanmar and examine attitudes toward the Rohingya, a severely marginalized group. We find that trust and support for Rohingya citizenship rights improve when the Rohingya people are framed as contributing to the pursuit of a shared goal. We also find that this is driven primarily by individuals who have more at stake in the overthrow of the coup regime compared to those with less at stake.

Instrumentality and/or Identity? Explanation of Participation in Collective Action in the Gabonese Repressive Context Based on the Dual-Pathway Model of Social Movement Participation

The dual-pathway model of social movement participation posits that engagement in social movements is done through an instrumental pathway (by evaluating the costs and benefits of participation) or an identification pathway (by becoming aware of the similarity and destiny shared with members of the same social category as oneself); these pathways are mutually exclusive. In the present research, this postulate, formalized and tested until now exclusively in a democratic context, is tested in a repressive context, which differs from the democratic context due to the quasi-systematic recourse of the institutional authorities to coercive tactics to prevent the expression of dissident discourse and conduct. The data were collected during a student social movement from 389 Gabonese students (232 men and 152 women), aged between 16 and 33 (M = 23.9, SD = 3.20). They were administered self-reported measures, focusing on instrumentality, identity, and intention to participate in protest action. The results report that the instrumental and identification pathways simultaneously predict the intention to participate in protest action. They are therefore not mutually exclusive, as the model suggests.

Egyptian queer women’s quiet activism within repressive contexts in the Middle East

ABSTRACT This study highlights an unconventional form of LGBTQIA activism within restrictive contexts in the Middle East. Building on the triangulation of data findings obtained from activists’ social media accounts from 2014 until 2022, this study argues that Egyptian queer women mobilized quiet activism as a safe form of individual engagement within a repressive and anti-queer context fuelled by social disdain. Tracking women’s individual life stories, this study revealed an unfamiliar strategy of action that has been overlooked by scholarship addressing the LGBTQIA advocacy as a collective action in the Middle East. While scholars have entrenched the LGBTQIA advocacy within a logic of collective activism and organized cyber/groundwork, this study underlined quiet activism as a coping mechanism with state repression in order to contest the state persecution of queer citizens and violation of individual rights and freedom. Being at the intersection of individual engagement, transformative events and personal emotions, quiet activism is an adaptive form of entanglement with repressive contexts through non-confrontational and unchallenging tools of action, such as personal encounters and emotions.

Twice Invisible, Twice Clandestine. Football and Lesbianism in Spain During the Years of Democratic Transition (1970–1982)

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between women’s football and lesbianism during the 1970s in Spain as well as the invisibility characteristics of this group of women in the context of the invisibility of women’s football in this period and in the context of the political transition until 1982. In the repressive context of late Francoism and given the validity until 1978 of laws that expressly persecuted homosexuality, social, cultural, legal, and political pressure had a very important impact on lesbian women who participated in the incipient practice of football in Spain in the 1970s. Some of these players built gay social networks through sports clubs and later started clandestine meetings in bars and private celebrations. The period studied—between 1970 and 1982—coincided with the rebirth of women’s football in Spain and the international emergence of this sport. The research has been based on the use of in-depth interview as a method and historiographical technique that has allowed us to obtain the life stories of nine lesbian or heterosexual women football players in different Spanish cities (who in general have lived and live in a private sexual identity) and two coaches linked to women’s teams. These sources have been expanded and contrasted from others of a documentary nature (specialized press and bibliography) to reconstruct the context studied and contrast the reliability of the information collected. In conclusion, it has been established that, despite the low visibility of women’s football and homosexuality, the legal pressure of the period and the opposition of the public authorities and institutions of the dictatorship, the field of football allowed these women to overcome some of the difficulties in the process of building their identity and discrimination based on sexual orientation. In turn, support networks—especially of teammates—private parties and atmosphere bars, were fundamental to the life experience of young lesbian athletes in the still repressive context of the end of the Franco dictatorship and the first years of the young democratic regime in Spain.

La vanguardia que ríe: revista <i>Cacharro(s)</i> (2003-2005)

Cacharro(s) magazine has recently begun to gain the interest it deserves as one of the first digital publications in Cuba. A continuation of the Diáspora(s) project, Cacharro(s) shared with it its avant-garde vocation and its "samizdat" status. In this article I approach this publication from the point of view of its political use of humor. I start with a preliminary definition of the comic in repressive contexts as it has been proposed from dissident positions in Cuba; then I place Cacharro(s) magazine in the context of opposition publications at the turn of the century, and finally I analyze the use of humor in the magazine, taking as an object some cover illustrations and some reflections on laughter as a political attitude.

Sexuality, Migration, and LGB Policy: A Portrait of Immigrants in Same-Sex Couples in the United States

Both internationally and in the United States, the policy landscape for same-sex couples is changing rapidly, and surveys report swiftly increasing numbers of immigrants in same-sex couples in the US. Yet few researchers have examined immigrants in lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) couples on a large scale, especially regarding their relationship to LGB policy. Are these immigrants disadvantaged and fleeing anti-LGB contexts, or are they empowered to migrate by progressive origin-country LGB policy? Using American Community Survey data from 2008 to 2019 and original datasets indexing LGB policy changes in 122 countries and all US states, this study assesses and characterizes the scale of LGB migration to the US as well as the role of LGB policy. Compared to immigrants in different-sex couples, those in same-sex couples come from richer, more democratic countries that are less represented among immigrants in the US. They also tend to be more highly educated, work in more prestigious occupations, and have higher incomes. While previous work largely focuses on LGB immigrants from repressive contexts, fixed-effect models show that higher proportions of these immigrants come from LGB-friendly countries, and they are more likely to live in progressive US states. These findings highlight how sexuality as well as state policies seemingly unrelated to migration can shape migratory pathways.

Impresarios of identity: How the leaders of Czechoslovakia's 'Candlelight Demonstration' enabled effective collective action in a context of repression.

This paper presents an analysis of identity leadership (Haslam et al., The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence and power, Routledge, 2020) in the 1988 'Candlelight Demonstration' in Bratislava which was a precursor to the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The analysis is based on interviews with the five remaining leaders of the demonstration and addresses three core issues. First, how leaders use performative means (identity impresarioship) as well as limited rhetorical means (identity entrepreneurship) to assemble protestors and create a sense of shared identity amongst them. Second, how these strategies of mobilization are linked to the highly repressive context in which the demonstration took place. Third, we analyse the extent to which these strategies are rooted in a psychological understanding of the processes of mobilization. We conclude by addressing the implications for our general understanding of leadership and the mobilization of collective action and the need for more research into these processes under conditions of repression.

Speaking with a ‘soft voice’: professional and pragmatic civilities amongst South Sudanese NGO leaders

ABSTRACT This article examines the forms of ‘civility’ promoted by South Sudanese NGO leaders and staff in their efforts to navigate a context of pervasive political repression. Drawing on in-depth, life-work history interviews, it shows how the careful cultivation of a ‘non-political’ identity was a way of securing space to operate in a highly militarised, politically restricted environment, of working across the divisions created by conflict, and of creating small spaces for change. The article also points to the limitations of these non-political positions, to the struggles of aspirational projects to overcome the inequalities in which they are embedded, and to the risk of reproducing the hierarchies and exclusions of the wider humanitarian industry. For external actors engaged in ‘localisation’ efforts, the discussion is a reminder that decisions about which organisations to fund are inherently political, with implications for dynamics of inequality and marginalisation in South Sudanese (civil) society.

Dual Identity in Repressive Contexts: An Agent-Based Model of Protest Dynamics

Protest campaign movements are often carried out by coalitions rather than by homogeneous groups. Accordingly, an opposition member has both a narrow partisan identity and a broad all-opposition identity. Seeking to prevent mass political participation, autocracies can repress protesters regardless of their group membership or apply the “divide and conquer” principle, targeting specific groups. Any strategy of repression drives some dynamics of identity. For instance, broad repression may rally the opposition by increasing broad identity at the expense of narrow identity. This dynamic of identity causes complex dynamics of motivation for participation in the protest, which affects the turnout. The paper introduces a computational model to describe the dynamics of the turnout. The model employs the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) and accounts for the dual protest identity.

Intra-Party Cohesion in Zimbabwe’s Ruling Party after Robert Mugabe

Some mainstream political scientists apply the trilogy of exit, voice and loyalty in studying intra-party cohesion. This approach applies more neatly in liberal than in repressive contexts. I therefore make three modifications to enhance the trilogy’s descriptive and explanatory power in an authoritarian context using the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) after Robert Mugabe. First, there is need to integrate non-voluntary exit as party members are mostly expelled against their will in a context where there are limited livelihood opportunities outside party-state patronage and defection is ruthlessly punished. Second, voice should be understood as predominantly expressed over preferences for personalities in internal power distribution rather than over policies. Third, loyalty is not always to the party institution to promote unity but to individuals or factions. From this positioning, ZANU PF is predominantly a non-cohesive party characterised by ephemerally organised leader-follower groups largely seeking power and patronage.

Narrating Communist Repression in and Outside the Courtroom: The Case of Former Prison Commander Alexandru Vișinescu and its Resonance with (Societally) Available ‘Narrative Worlds’

In 2016, Alexandru Vișinescu was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his actions as a prison commander five decades earlier. This article explores the epistemic function of this “landmark case” by contrasting the judicial narrative with the narratives of the participants in the trial, i.e., the civil parties, and spectators, i.e., the university students representing the younger generation. The accounts of the survivors’ families, while showing great similarities with the judicial account, considerably broaden the setting and locus of responsibility and place Vișinescu's story in the larger context of communist repression. University students, by contrast, have very limited knowledge of the adjudicated events, reflecting their de-contextualised understanding of the past. This understanding is an expression of what I call the available narrative world, including publicly accessible narratives and discourses, but also subjective stories from the private sphere. In the Romanian context, characterised by perpetuated silences about the communist past, the narrative world available to university students is restricted and offers little resonance for the judicial narrative, making its integration into existing knowledge structures difficult. Consequently, I argue that the reception and acceptance of judicial narratives varies according to their resonance with societally available narrative worlds.

“Making the wound bleed”: Nostalgia, Mourning, and Morality among Turkish Revolutionaries in Istanbul

:This article investigates nostalgia and mourning among former Turkish revolutionary militants, the main victims of state violence in the wake of the Turkish 1980 military coup. It understands these emotions as ethically imbued moods that are both conscious and unconscious and permeate both public discourses and the innermost spheres of former fighters. These moods pervade the everydayness of former revolutionaries, their discourses on the past and the present as well as ritualized occasions, such as anniversaries, gatherings, and commemorations. Based on fieldwork research conducted in Istanbul, this article conceptualizes these moods as inter-subjective emotional practices with a certain degree of agency that work as political and moral modes of engaging with the world. Although former revolutionaries intend these moods as practices of resistance against the ongoing state repression, this article argues that their active perpetuation does not lie in their political success in the public battle for memory and recognition, but in their ability to shape former militants’ subjectivity, invigorate their generational bond, keep alive the moral economy of revolutionary fighter, and create a community of loss. Likewise, this contribution demonstrates how revolutionary feelings of nostalgia and mourning shape a social poetics that reduces possibilities for acting in new ways on history and contributes to the creation of a community as cohesive as isolated from the rest of society. Notwithstanding the endurance of state oppression over time, this contribution warns against restraining our analysis to an unmasking of asymmetrical violence and unequal power relationships in the public sphere. It instead argues that, even in repressive contexts, it is important to investigate the symbolic codes and the political feelings that shape social actors’ subjectivities, their moral horizon and their possibilities of actions.

The constitutional context of exceptional courts and state repression

The constitutional context of exceptional courts and state repression

Managing Visibilities: The Shades and Shadows of NGO Work in Repressive Contexts

This study explores how visibilities are produced and managed, and how they transform the work of activists operating in repressive contexts. To advance emerging research, this study blends theoretical perspectives from visibility and activism research and builds on ethnographic methods and fieldwork in a non-profit organization. The contribution of the article to research at the intersection of visibility and activism is twofold: firstly, the article identifies the social and material agencies involved in the production of different dimensions of visibilities (mildly shaded and mostly shadowed). Secondly, the article shows how the three identified relational imbrications of agencies (encryption, obfuscation, and concealment) at times empower and undermine the efforts of both activists and oppressors. The findings provide novel insights concerning the (dis)empowering role of visibilities applicable to many collectives, corporations and institutions that rely on visibility management, as datafication is making it increasingly easy for behaviors to be seen.

Online repression and tactical evasion: evidence from the 2020 Day of Anger protests in Egypt

ABSTRACT Following the 2011 Arab Spring, autocrats have sought to limit citizens’ ability to publicize offline protests over social media. In this article, we explore how users adjust to these restrictions. To do so, we analyse 33 million tweets sent from Egypt during the “Day of Anger” protests in September 2020. We find evidence of online tactical evasion in a highly repressive context. Compared to neutral users, regime opponents are more likely to issue calls for offline protests using new or dedicated accounts that contain no personal information. Users are also more likely to delete tweets calling for mobilization ex-post in a bid to conceal their activism. We find weaker evidence suggesting that regime opponents try to evade laws targeting critical accounts with over 5000 followers. The findings illustrate how activists in autocracies use social media to mobilize street-level contention while attempting to mitigate the risk of state repression.

Embodying the Catholic faith

Abstract This essay probes the political and ideological status of such images in the officially Calvinist state after 1579. Focusing on the relationship between representations of the body of dead priests and the collective body of Catholic believers, Marquaille’s essay addresses one visual expression of the paradoxical situation whereby Catholics were reduced to minority status, not in numbers but through restrictions on public worship, including the public display of images. These prohibitions on the display of images notably extended to funerary rites, which were strictly regulated. This repressive context, according to Marquaille, gave rise to the posthumous clerical portrait as a new class of image with specific resonance for the emergent Dutch Catholic community. While Protestants shunned the representation of mortal remains, Dutch Catholics in particular came to embrace such depictions as an affirmative and distinctive feature of their newly proprietary visual culture.

Reconsidering communication visibility in politically restrictive contexts: organizational social media use in China

Abstract Increasing evidence reveals that social media visibility produces paradoxes in which actors simultaneously confront contradictory, even mutually exclusive, conditions. Yet limited research has explored how actors perceive these paradoxes and manage resulting tensions in a politically repressive context. Ubiquitous government oversight, information control, and Internet censorship may uniquely complicate paradoxes of visibility in non-Western environments. To address this gap, this research reconsiders the paradox(es) of visibility in politically restrictive contexts. Interview data from 50 social entrepreneurs and two field experts in China reveal the antecedents to visibility paradoxes, and suggest three novel forms of paradoxes: resource investment, public attention, and social change. We also show these paradoxes are interdependent such that one may be amplified or attenuated by the other paradoxes. Further, we identify three strategies for responding to these paradoxes and suggest implications for vulnerable actors in maintaining a public profile, especially in sensitive sociopolitical environments.