Spaces Of Contestation Research Articles

Democratizing the Op-Ed: Anti-Caste Counterpublics & the Mainstream News

Abstract How have anti-caste commentators in mainstream English news in India participated in media discourses on caste? In this article, I draw attention to a digital space of contestation where anti-caste writings have gained prominence—the opinion column in online news platforms. I am particularly interested in how anti-caste writings, bearing the imprint of authorial agency, have emerged in the digital sphere through structural linkages between caste, linguistic formations, and formal politics. The article considers how and in what ways historically marginalized Dalit-Bahujan commentators and their news public’s concerns are rendered visible within the space of mainstream digital news.

Bangladesh in the United Nations Peace Operations: Maintaining Sustained Engagement within the Space of Contestation

Since 1988 Bangladesh has been one of the highest troop and police-contributing countries (T&PCC) to United Nations Peace operations (UNPO). Over the years, Bangladesh’s armed forces and police had not only carved out space for them as a top T&PCC but also earned a name for itself as a dependable force that delivered the tasks assigned to it. Despite this being a learning experience for the country’s security institutions, Bangladesh has experienced various challenges in missions due to different factors. For example, there are significant transformations in the nature of conflict and mandates of peacekeeping operations, requiring T&PCCs to be prepared for future participation in such missions. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the trends of Bangladeshi peacekeepers to understand their involvement in peace missions and their capacity to address the challenges of contemporary tasks. It also investigates capacity-building issues, skill enhancement, and increasing competency of Bangladeshi peacekeepers. This paper argues Bangladesh needs to comprehend the changing scenario and enhance the capacity of troops and police peacekeepers by undertaking appropriate measures, including tapping into the experience of its returning peacekeepers. Otherwise, the sustainability of Bangladesh’s participation in UN peace support deployments may face severe stress and become problematic.

The Native American dream in Sherman Alexie's short story “One Good Man”

The purpose of this article is to discuss the idea of an Indian identity and the Native American Dream in Sherman Alexie’s short story “One Good Man.” In this story, Alexie introduces the idea of the Indian constructed by the White Americans and attempts through his characters to redefine that concept by deconstructing all the different stereotypes created by the White American society. In order to do this, he also introduces the idea of the American Dream that he calls the “Native American Dream” to express the social inequality and hopeless existence of the Indian community always immersed in an ironic and comic discourse. In this sense, Alexie proposes a new definition of the Indian identity looking back to culture, tradition and the space of the reservation. He creates in his fiction a space of contestation and resistance opening a new voice for the Native American identity.

How Policy Institutions Filter Conflict: The (De)Escalation of Policy Conflict through Closing Down or Opening Up the Space for Contestation

This article argues that in situations of policy conflict, policymaking institutions that act as de facto conflict arbiters may escalate the conflict they are trying to settle. The role of institutions in policy conflicts is studied in the lengthy and highly contested policymaking process of the multibillion-euro 'Oosterweelconnection' highway in Antwerp (Belgium). The article concludes that while narrowing the scope of conflict through standardized institutional procedures initially disciplined the Oosterweel conflict, it ultimately drove further escalation, as residual topics of conflict remained and sought new institutional outlets. At the same time, more flexible institutions, while being able to finally settle the Oosterweel conflict, produced an agreement that remained institutionally unembedded and therefore more vulnerable to exploitation because it was not formally enforceable.

Leaving the Market, Taking the Square: Space and Mobility in the Revolts of Late Medieval Tournai

Abstract This article studies the relation between the movement of people and objects and the use of urban places during revolts in late medieval Tournai. It posits that fixed locations were but one ingredient in the construction of medieval spaces of protest and contestation, and that most other essential elements, such as people, objects, and performances, were in fact mobile. As shown here through the case of Tournai, the mobile nature of these elements allowed rebels to transform urban space and its meanings as they moved across the town. The first part of the article looks at how rebels utilized mobility to disrupt and re-appropriate ordinary itineraries. The second part focuses on the “Becquerel revolts,” a series of uprisings that took place in a small, peripheral square. This is to show how urban guilds, by effectively managing to move people, objects, and performances to unexpected locations, not only took control of specific places, but also created their own spaces of contestation.

Film as /and Popular Social Text: The Reception of John Trengove’s Inxeba/The Wound and Wanuri Kahui’s Rafiki

This article is interested in popular and institutional or state responses to the representations of queerness offered in the films Inxeba/The Wound (South Africa, 2017) and Rafiki (Kenya, 2018). Aside from portraying the marked homophobia that continues to circulate on the African continent, the institutional and state responses to the films have overshadowed the positive popular reception which has characterised conversations around the films on social media and public spaces. This article shows how social media functions as animportant space of contestation for diverse issues relating to non-normative gender and sexual identities. As these films circulate in different spaces and are viewed by diverse audiences, they elicit equally diverse reactions and responses. The article examines how viewers, in Africa and beyond, receive and engage with the queerness represented in the two films. It argues that the multifaceted reactions to Inxeba/The Wound and Rafiki are central to articulating important questions about what it means to be queer in Africa,and particularly what it implies for black queers to inhabit heteronormative and patriarchal spaces on the continent. Through an analysis of the reactions and receptions of the two films in Africa and the global North, it is argued that it is possible to trace important inter-regional, intra-continental and intercontinental dialogues and conversations regarding the representation of queer African subjectivities. The intra-continental and inter-continental dialogues bring to light questions of gaze and viewing that are inherent in the circulation of queer-themed films.
 Kewords: Inxeba/The Wound, Rafiki, reception, popular culture, queerness

The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture. Edited by Marion Demossier, David Lees, Aurélien Mondon, and Nina Parish

This handbook aims to provide an overview of the most pressing and mediatized cultural and political issues facing contemporary France, placed against the backdrop of modern European history. Essays by prominent academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds make up the book’s four parts. The contributions in the first part provide a foundation for the subsequent sections, focusing on modern and contemporary French politics, with special attention to the electoral politics leading to the Macron presidency, the history of the notion of Gaullism, colonization of and involvement in Africa, and the evolution of women’s political participation. The second and third parts engage with questions related to belonging, identity, and spaces of contestation. The authors interrogate a wide range of highly politicized topics in France, such as policies on immigration and ‘integration’, Islamophobia, the racialization of Romani people, protest movements, constructions of and discourses surrounding the banlieue, and contemporary feminisms. The final part addresses the mediation of memory, remembrance, and culture. Contributors analyse exhibition decisions made in First World War museums, the role of propaganda and mass media in politics, music nostalgia, the figure of the public intellectual, and representations of Jews. One of the book’s strengths is its inclusion of many chapters dedicated to interrogating questions of race, racism, and othering. Marwan Mohammed, Marion Demossier, Tom Martin, Fabien Truong, Mehammed Mack, and Rebecca Infield and Rebekah Vince offer particularly illuminating contributions that consider the interplay between French national identity and various forms of race politics. If the ambitious aim of this book is to provide a survey of the French political and cultural landscape, it bears mentioning that any attempt to canonize cultural issues worthy of study necessarily involves the politics of exclusion and inclusion. While Mack’s chapter does look at the gay nightclub space, this handbook would have been improved if more space were devoted to the consideration of queer and trans issues in France. Moreover, certain chapters reveal blind spots and a disconnect with the populations being spoken for. For instance, ‘Gender and Crisis’ ventures into troubling territory with the suggestion that misogyny may be present in fashion companies’ decisions simply to sell headscarves (p. 183). Such a claim fits within femonationalist discourses that instrumentalize feminism against Muslims by characterizing Islam as a fundamentally oppressive religion from which women must be ‘saved’. Similarly, ‘The French “Banlieues”’ dubiously asserts that racial polarization is ‘inscribed […] in mindsets [in America], far more than in France’ and attributes ‘most’ riots in the banlieue to the ‘accidental’ killings of youth by police (p. 137). A consideration of the many high-profile, non-accidental instances of excessive force throughout French history that have led to the deaths of Black and Maghrebi people would have been helpful here. In summary, this handbook’s twenty-three chapters provide a foundation necessary for students of contemporary French culture and politics. However, readers should engage critically and thoughtfully, as academics themselves are not impervious to the effects of the mediatization and politicization of the topics discussed throughout this book.

Contesting the Classroom: Reimagining Education in Moroccan and Algerian Literatures by Erin Twohig

Reviewed by: Contesting the Classroom: Reimagining Education in Moroccan and Algerian Literatures by Erin Twohig Jocelyn A. Frelier Twohig, Erin. Contesting the Classroom: Reimagining Education in Moroccan and Algerian Literatures. Liverpool UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-78962-021-4. Pp. 192. Twohig's book begins with excerpts of two widely-read North African books (one Moroccan and one Algerian) in which the child or adolescent protagonist notes the tension surrounding their education. As Twohig points out, the end of the colonial era in Morocco and Algeria left educators, authors, and policy-makers with an unanswered question: "Who would write a new national literature after independence—and in what language?" (1). The remainder of Twohig's book is dedicated to understanding the paradox in which literature that critiques the exclusionary practices of traditional education also relies on the classroom for dissemination. "The classroom," Twohig writes, is "both a fictional space of contestation and a concrete site of canon formation and literary influence" in Moroccan and Algerian literature since independence (3). To make sense of this enigma, Twohig has chosen to break up her book into five chapters that each take up different pivotal moments in the shift from a colonial education system to a postcolonial one. For example, the first chapter examines literary representations of the first days in school after independence. Twohig shows how novels that are set in this period highlight an educational irony—the governments of these newly independent countries issued cultural mandates that schools would erase colonial influence from their curricula while cultural products studied in these classrooms suggested colonial history be reconciled. In her second chapter, Twohig pivots toward the political impulse to Arabize North Africa. Critical to the arguments of this chapter is the notion that Morocco and Algeria are not and never have been monocultural spaces. Thus, a sharp turn toward Modern Standard Arabic represented a second wave of colonialism for many Moroccan and/or Algerian pupils. The theoretical thrust of this chapter lies in Twohig's analysis of Arab forms of "new colonialism" in a postcolonial [End Page 260] world as well as the limits of colonialism as metaphor when contemplating these scenarios. In chapter 3, Twohig focuses on Algeria and on the period of violence in the 1990s now known as the Black Decade. This chapter analyzes literary form and style to remark on the representation of violence through fractured narrative. The authors in this chapter "ask important questions about the ethics of treating human suffering as something that can be learned and understood pedagogically" (22). Chapters 4 and 5 are dedicated solely to education in Morocco and to a particular question: do classrooms allow space for minority voices? The chapters split the work of two generations of authors and reach two different sets of conclusions. Where chapter 4 shows how authors Leila Abouzeid and Brick Oussaïd might reply "yes," chapter 5 complements this answer with a "no" from Mohamed Nedali and Yacine Adnan. To conclude, Twohig assembles a series of events, studies, and non-literary cultural products to ask questions about the future of literature and education in these environments. Having fleshed out some of the intricacies, Twohig concludes that "literature [is] one of the most powerful forms of commentary on, and intervention in, educational debates" (153). Jocelyn A. Frelier Texas A&M University, College Station Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

Politics and economy of resilience: EU resilience-building in Palestine and Jordan and its disciplinary governance

ABSTRACT This article examines empirical resilience interventions to demonstrate how resilience-building is utilised to govern in non-liberal settings and how its political and economic positionality shapes concrete resilience projects, processes of inclusion and exclusion and the hierarchies between them. It argues that the politics and economy that undergird resilience, coupled with the lack of freedom, render empirical resilience less fit for the purpose of governmentality in non-liberal and authoritarian conditions. In these circumstances, resilience-building governs through discipline. Resilience is structurally oriented towards pinpointed interventions directed at specific targets, subjects and fields. It unfolds as a hierarchal and top-down process, which positions local actors and concerns at the bottom. The inclusion or exclusion of subjects, objects and goals and the hierarchies that underpin empirical resilience are not inherent to specific resilience thinking, but rather derive from unfixed and contingent foreign policy rationalities and instruments. This contingency highlights the indeterminate nature of resilience, which opens space for contestation and decoupling. Resilience’s meaning and content are dependent on the dynamics of the foreign policy instruments. The policy-driven nature of resilience intervention renders its theorisation as a difficult challenge.

“We are all migrants through time”: History and geography in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

ABSTRACT Exit West reflects a progressive shift in Pakistani anglophone literature from the familiar framework of postcolonial writing back to writing beyond the 9/11 era. Set in a post-Brexit–Trump world, this speculative fiction seeks to democratize the future by re-imagining the relationship between history and geography, aligned with the dimensions of time and space. In Hamid’s view, the present wish of humanity to go back towards past greatness poses a grave danger to the imagining of a progressive future. His novel therefore presents a radical future of global migration imagined through the magical portals that allow instant access to destinations around the world, challenging border divisions. This article argues that this turn towards speculative postcolonial fiction opens literary doors into cognitive spaces of contestation as well as meaningful dialogues in a post-post-9/11 world of global insecurity and anti-immigration sentiments that have contributed to far reaching events like Brexit.

Public Sphere without a Printing Press: Texts, Reading Networks, and Public Opinion in Venezuela during the Age of Revolutions

AbstractAt the end of the eighteenth century, members of the colonial elite of the Captaincy General of Venezuela addressed a letter to the king of Spain in which they sought permission to have a printing press in the city of Caracas. In the letter, they argued that the establishment of such a press was fundamental for the economic and commercial development of the Captaincy. Months later, they learned that the permission for a printing press had been denied without further explanations. Venezuela became one of the last capital cities in colonial Spanish America to possess this technology. The lack of a printing press during this politically dynamic period moved by the Atlantic revolutions did not necessarily affect public access to reading, sharing of information, and political debate in Venezuela. Venezuela's unique geographical location, and its open and frequent connections with the Caribbean region during the Age of Revolutions allowed for the effective entrance and transit of people and written materials that spread revolutionary ideas and impressions, creating a dynamic and contested political environment. Here I argue that during the late-colonial period, semiliterate forms of knowledge transmission, partially promoted by Spanish reformism, mobilised a socially diverse public that openly debated the monarchical regime, the system of slavery, and the hierarchical socio-racial order of colonial society. The colonial public sphere in Venezuela was shaped, then, within a context of emerging socio-racial tensions and became a space of contestation and struggle, animated by the overlapping of contradictory political discourses.This study contributes to recent debates about the character, nature, and relevance of the public sphere in the colonial world. It explores the circulation of manuscripts and ephemeral written materials, the different modes of production and reception of texts that developed in the colonial context, and an analysis of the character of the urban spaces that facilitated the performativity of texts. It thus offers a new framework for understanding the emergence of a public sphere in Venezuela, a colonial peripheral province with no printing press.

When international sustainability frameworks encounter domestic politics: The sustainable development goals and agri-food governance in South America

• The SDGs’ ability to strengthen inclusiveness is heavily shaped by domestic politics, institutions and power relations. • Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay present very different cases of how the SDGs play out in domestic agri-food governance. • The capacity, resources and international networks of civil society organizations affect the way they engage with the SDGs. • There is a risk that the SDGs legitimize business as usual and entrench marginalization rather than support transformation. • Actors may shift from exploiting the vagueness of sustainability as a concept to cherry-picking from the broad set of goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been heralded as a landmark achievement and a major opportunity for transformative and inclusive change towards sustainability. This promise, however, remains largely unverified. To help fill this gap, we examine how the SDGs have been taken up in the domestic politics of agri-food governance – a salient and contested policy area – in three South American countries: Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Our empirical assessment is based on a scoping of the institutions set up for domestic SDG governance, document analysis of the first voluntary national reviews on the SDGs, and 63 key-informant interviews. The analysis shows that the ability of the SDGs to strengthen inclusiveness is largely shaped by domestic politics, pre-existing institutions and power relations, as well as the resources, capacities and prior experiences of civil society and subnational governments. In practice, the SDGs’ emphasis on inclusion does not necessarily mean that a wider range of perspectives are taken into account in domestic contexts. In Paraguay, the implementation of the SDGs so far mirrors the patterns of marginalization evident also in other policy processes. In Uruguay and Brazil, the SDGs have offered possibilities for at least drawing attention to a variety of perspectives by strengthening the already existing, fairly open political institutions in the case of Uruguay, and by opening up a space for contestation by civil society organizations and subnational governments in the case of Brazil. The SDGs may then be an opportunity for change, but there is also a risk that they become a justification for business as usual. Actors now employ metonymy as a tactic, cherry-picking preferred goals or targets as a sign of supposed adherence to the whole 2030 Agenda. Further research is needed with more ex-post analyses of the SDGs beyond the praising of their nominal transformative potential.

UN Women’s feminist engagement with governance by indicators in the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals

The rise of evidence-based policy has brought with it an increase in the use of indicators and data-driven global projects. The United Nations System has used the indicator-based Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) projects to govern policy from above. Of particular interest in this article is how indicators are used to govern gender equality initiatives within the Goals. By using ‘governance by indicators’ as a framework for understanding global policy processes, we can better understand how the power of indicators can help or hinder progress towards gender equality depending on the extent to which it renders gendered concerns visible. Studying indicators in this forum also illuminates spaces of contestation, where policy actors can debate indicators and reshape meaning. Based on this framework, this article explores UN Women’s feminist critique of measurement and knowledge production in the MDGs and SDGs. Looking through their feminist lens applied to this form of knowledge production can yield a better understanding of the use of indicators in shaping evidence-based policy from the global level. In recognizing the value of quantification and data-driven evidence in policy, this article speaks to the tension between feminist critique of quantitative knowledge production and the feminist approach’s welcoming of multiple ways of knowing.

How Can We Quarantine Without a Home? Responses of Activism and Urban Social Movements in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis in Lisbon.

In Lisbon, during the COVID‐19 pandemic period, new spaces for contestation and the action of urban social movements intensified, capitalising on the visibility for the right to housing, as a basic human right and an unconditional public health imperative, to fulfil the duties of lockdown and social isolation, imposed by the State of Exception. Its narrative and strategies reinforces the counter‐hegemonic movement that denounces the logics of commodification and financialisation in the housing sector, placing hope in a post‐capitalist transition in the post‐COVID horizon. We conclude that the actors in this urban struggle have limited power over the changes they initiate, or make an effort to inflict, if they are not involved in a concerted and politically integrated action, not least because the achievements they obtain are temporary and exceptional, like the state of emergency imposed by COVID‐19.

Education as site of memory: developing a research agenda

ABSTRACT The field of memory studies tends to focus attention on the ‘3Ms’ – museums, monuments, memorials – as sites where memories are constructed, communicated, and contested. Where education is identified as a site for memory, the focus is often narrowly on what is or is not communicated within curricula or textbooks, assuming that schools simply pass on messages agreed or struggled over elsewhere. This article explores the possibilities opened when educative processes are not taken as stable and authoritative sites for transmitting historical narratives, but instead as spaces of contestation, negotiation and cultural production. With a focus on ‘difficult histories’ of recent conflict and historical injustice, we develop a research agenda for education as a site of memory and show how this can illuminate struggles over dominant historical narratives at various scales, highlighting agencies that educational actors bring to making sense of the past.

Decolonising sexuality in Egypt: al-Tatawwur’s struggle for liberation

ABSTRACT This article analyses the related concepts of sexuality, body and gender and the role they played in the struggle for liberation in the literary magazine al-Tatawwur (1940–1941). Al-Tatawwur was a cultural, literary and artistic magazine, the space of contestation of the radical leftist group Art et Liberté (al-fann wa al-hurriyya). This magazine was the project of a new generation of Egyptian intellectuals from a mix political backgrounds, disillusioned with the parliamentary and party politics of the previous generation. It attempted to contest the new effendiyya (capitalist bourgeoisie) nationalist discourse and the semi-independent, European-controlled nation-state through art and culture. The problem of gender, sexuality and the body was studied in the Egyptian press in the interwar period. However, little attention has been paid to cultural magazines related to the newly emerging Egyptian left, and the way they dealt with the role sexuality would play in the liberation of the colonised. The aim of this article is to understand how gender, sexual desire and sexuality were key for the idea of liberation among the leftist intelligentsia in Egypt and how these concepts subverted the discourses of the newly created nation-state.

#WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media

AbstractShowcasing stories of welfare beneficiaries in their own words, a recent Aotearoa (New Zealand)‐based campaign called “We Are Beneficiaries” used social media to create a space of contestation to the widespread stigmatisation of poverty. While existing literature strongly emphasises the role played by traditional media in constructing and reinforcing stigma, and has more recently begun to explore resistance and contestation, relatively few accounts address efforts, like the We Are Beneficiaries campaign, that seek to destigmatise poverty stigma via social media. Accordingly, this paper argues that social media can serve as a counterpublic space for the destigmatisation of poverty. By discussing how the We Are Beneficiaries campaign refuted stigmatising narratives, critiqued institutions and sought to build solidarity among and with welfare beneficiaries, the paper draws attention to the potential of social media in the development of counterdiscourses as well as new political identities and claims‐making.

Conflict management in Indonesia’s post-authoritarian democracy: resource contestation, power dynamics and brokerage

ABSTRACTContestation over land, resource access and rents has long underpinned both sub-national conflicts and centre-periphery tensions in Indonesia. This paper explores resource conflict management in Indonesia, with a particular focus on the political economy of Riau province. It argues a centre-periphery bargain was struck at the onset of democratisation to redistribute a larger proportion of oil and gas rents to Riau, de-escalating support for the emergent Free Riau Movement. Through a combination of national and sub-national political settlements between narrow but adaptive coalitions of political-private sector elite interests, these coalitions have maintained their power and control over resource rents in three key sectors: oil and gas, timber, and palm oil. Brokers have been instrumental in maintaining the influence of these coalitions over time – helping to co-opt households into industry supply chains, who then support aligned political elites. This has produced relative stability in the political order in Riau, but one which displays the tenets of illiberalism in which the space for contestation is limited and social interests tend to acquiesce for small gains.

One: Egúngún curated by Kristen Windmuller-Luna

One: Egúngún curated by Kristen Windmuller-Luna

Contested femininity: strategies of resistance and reproduction across adolescence in northern Uganda

Adolescent girls and young women have recently gained a central position in gender equality and development. However, little research investigates female experiences of the complex dynamics of both change and resistance to change in gender norms and structures. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, Connell and Schippers to analyse longitudinal in-depth interviews, this paper explores how girls in northern Uganda learn, challenge and (re)produce patriarchal structures throughout the life-course and across social fields. It highlights the costs, consequences and benefits at stake in expressing hegemonic femininity and expands understanding of how adolescent girls and young women actively strategise to protect their wellbeing and create space for contestation. Findings call for greater attention to the coexistence of resistance to, and reproduction of, gender orders, and offer opportunities for additional research for theory building and programme implementation.