Liberalism Research Articles

The Gender-Crime Convergence across Race-Ethnicities: Testing Mismatched Liberation Theory with an Intersectional Lens

This paper examines the mismatched liberation perspective to explain the gender ratio of imprisonment across U.S. racial/ethnic groups. The theory posits that a misalignment between women’s cultural aspirations and societal means to achieve them leads to higher female crime rates compared to male. Utilizing U.S. data from 1980 to 2019, the paper constructs measures of mismatched liberation by examining varied cultural and social structures across racial/ethnic groups. Results reveal that the narrowing gender gap in crime is primarily a White phenomenon. However, the ubiquitous experiences of mismatched liberation significantly contribute to the increased share of female incarceration across all groups.

Decolonising mathematics education: Teachers’ initial experiences of using ethnomathematical games in the intermediate phase

The African Agenda 2063 strives to attain the goals of peace and prosperity, and to do so, there must be a process of political liberation and decolonisation. In the South African context, decolonisation involves transforming the mathematics curriculum to one that is African by employing cultural approaches such as ethnomathematics. However, South African mathematics teachers still rely on Eurocentric methods for teaching mathematics. To decolonise mathematics in the Intermediate Phase, a project was initiated that utilised indigenous games for teaching mathematics. This paper aims to identify whether such efforts to decolonise mathematics education will be accepted or rejected by the mathematics teachers involved in this study. The paper is framed by the Critical Mathematics Pedagogy Theory. A qualitative case study approach was employed to collect data through a focus group interview with ten mathematics teachers who teach in rural and semi-rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The findings demonstrate that ethnomathematical games encourage mathematics learning, that teachers’ initial apprehensions gave way to enthusiasm, that learners were excited to play and learn, and that teachers found it effortless to integrate mathematical concepts such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, factorisation, and quadrilaterals with the indigenous games of Morabaraba, Tshetershere, Diketo, and Kgati. Recommendations include that mathematics educational policies incorporate ethnomathematics as a policy directive and that teachers receive training in alternative cultural pedagogical practices for teaching mathematics, such as the use of ethnomathematics. Future research endeavours should focus on finding avenues to sustain ethnomathematics in the classroom.

The redefinition of a Chinese sports hero’s public image: evidence from the reactions on Chinese social media to Sun Yang’s international trial

This study traces the metamorphosis of Chinese Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang’s public image from a national sports hero to an ordinary individual on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. To explore the interplay between national identity construction and mediated discursive (de-)heroization of athletes, we employ discourse theories and a self-constructed corpus to analyze popular Weibo posts and follow-up comments during and after Sun Yang’s controversial international doping trial. The findings demonstrate the influential role of Chinese state-run media in shaping online public opinion, contrasting with Sun Yang’s less strategic self-presentation. Weibo discussions feature conflicting discourses, including xenophobic nationalism, anti-authority sentiments, and cosmopolitan liberal values. Initially prevalent nationalistic views diminish following criticism from a state newspaper, which emphasizes adherence to international rules. This case illustrates the challenge for elite athletes in balancing a patriotic image with a cosmopolitan identity as China seeks to increase global influence and support.

Constitutional Overhaul, the War in Gaza, and the Puzzle of Civic Mobilization in Israel

Abstract Much has been written on the constitutional overhaul in Israel, and the attendant constitutional crisis in the first nine months of 2023. Since October 7, however, with the breakout of the Israel-Gaza war, the overhaul was seemingly shelved. This Article seeks to connect both events, by comparing the legal-political response to the overhaul with the legal-political response to the war. It asks why, given the intensity of the protest movement generated by the overhaul, there was a dearth of protest activity after the war, even though both events implicated similar values, namely the rule of law and individual rights, championed by the protest movement. I argue that a central reason for the disparity cannot only be explained by the dynamics of war but also due to the tensions and complexities inherent in Israel’s self-professed constitutional identity as a Jewish and democratic state. In particular, I argue that anti-overhaul protests appealed to liberal universalist values to garner bipartisan support, with the effect of bypassing substantive issues such as the occupation of the Palestinian Territories and discrimination faced by Israeli Palestinians. This explains the lack of Arab participation in the protests, as many perceived them to be an internal Jewish Affair. Thus, when post-war repressive measures mostly affected Israeli Palestinians, the protest movement failed to rally in their support. Although anti-overhaul protests could have brought about greater liberal consolidation in Israel, the relative lack of post-war mobilization casts lingering doubts on the possibility of long-term consolidation of liberal values in Israel. Attempts to depoliticize the protests, while perhaps successful in warding off the overhaul, and though impressive on their own, have likely failed in instilling deeper, more resilient, liberal values in Israel.

Proud to be not beautiful: navigating affects in the rebellious body project of Chinese TuoMeiYi feminism

ABSTRACT In recent years, TuoMeiYi (escaping beauty duty) has emerged in the Chinese digital space as a distinct feminist proposition. Advocating for women to break free from the constraints of beauty, TuoMeiYi feminists strive to redefine what a woman should look like, and actively practice their anti-beauty stance by shaving their hair into buzz cuts. This everyday feminist politics attempts to reclaim women’s autonomy over their bodies by transforming their feminist body into a rebellious project. Diverging from the prevalent media discursive approach in Chinese digital feminism studies, this article examines TuoMeiYi feminists’ explorative body project through the lens of affect grounded in corporeal and phenomenological feminist theories. Using digital ethnography to explore an online TuoMeiYi forum, this article recognizes that pride and shame have been discursively mobilized as pivotal tools to sustain the anti-beauty feminist ideal. Yet, the construction of the proud feminist subject also involves a highly self-autonomous logic that tries to eliminate feminist embodied feelings. In the end, this article argues that it is not ‘feeling good’ but the ‘strange feelings’ that demonstrate the feminist body is neither a docile nor consciously autonomous entity, but a rebellious affective being capable of feeling in unplanned alternative ways.

Democracy and Human Rights as Pillars of National Resilience: A Theoretical and Empirical Review

National resilience is a strategic concept that reflects the ability of a country to maintain its survival in the face of various threats, both domestic and foreign. Among the various pillars that underpin national resilience, democracy and human rights (HAM) play an important role. This study aims to determine and analyze the relationship between democracy, human rights, and national resilience from the point of view of theory and empirical evidence. This research uses a qualitative method with a literature study approach as a data collection technique. After the data is collected, the analysis process is carried out by sorting out relevant information, then presenting the data systematically to draw conclusions. The results show that democracy has a major role in providing legitimacy to the government, by creating a system where people can participate in decision-making. On the other hand, human rights become the main foundation of democracy, ensuring the protection of people's basic rights, which in turn creates conditions conducive to social growth and development. Some of the theories underlying the relationship between democracy, human rights and national security include social contract theory, liberal democracy theory and social justice theory. Empirically, several studies have shown a positive relationship between the implementation of democracy and human rights and national resilience. This research concludes that democracy and human rights contribute to national resilience by strengthening government legitimacy and creating an enabling environment for social and political stability. National resilience is a strategic concept that reflects the ability of a country to maintain its survival in the face of various threats, both domestic and foreign. Among the various pillars that underpin national resilience, democracy and human rights (HAM) play an important role. This study aims to determine and analyze the relationship between democracy, human rights, and national resilience from the point of view of theory and empirical evidence. This research uses a qualitative method with a literature study approach as a data collection technique. After the data is collected, the analysis process is carried out by sorting out relevant information, then presenting the data systematically to draw conclusions. The results show that democracy has a major role in providing legitimacy to the government, by creating a system where people can participate in decision-making. On the other hand, human rights become the main foundation of democracy, ensuring the protection of people's basic rights, which in turn creates conditions conducive to social growth and development. Some of the theories underlying the relationship between democracy, human rights and national security include social contract theory, liberal democracy theory and social justice theory. Empirically, several studies have shown a positive relationship between the implementation of democracy and human rights and national resilience. This research concludes that democracy and human rights contribute to national resilience by strengthening government legitimacy and creating an enabling environment for social and political stability.

Controversial issues in social study subjects: conveying values and facilitating critical thinking

ABSTRACT This study explores the practical implications of the paradox of moral education, focusing on how Swedish social study teachers (civics, geography, history, and religious education) navigate conflicting responsibilities to convey values and facilitate critical thinking when addressing controversial issues in their classrooms. Through qualitative interviews and observations, teachers were found to often lead by example, maintaining neutrality and presenting diverse perspectives. This approach appears to foster students towards embracing liberal values, promoting independent decision-making and personal responsibility, but it may come at the cost of critically evaluating these very ideals, norms, and values. The absence of official guidelines in the Swedish school system underscores the significance of understanding how teachers balance these conflicting responsibilities in their pedagogical practices. The study sheds light on the practical strategies employed by teachers, contributing valuable insights to a discourse traditionally centred on theoretical solutions to the paradox of moral education.

Constituent power in political liberalism: Constraining the future?

In Sovereignty across Generations, Ferrara attempts a dual feat. He demonstrates that political liberalism needs a nuanced doctrine of constituent power to be brought in line with traditional democratic concerns. At the same time, he argues that political liberalism is capable of making constituent power safe for democracy, in reining in its unruly and unbound character. By distinguishing between ‘the people’ and the electorate, Ferrara develops a transtemporal conception of the constituent subject, allowing moderate transformation but in effect binding all future time-slices of the people. In my comment, I address two issues with this. First, I ask how such accounts deal with the fact of immigration. It is not clear whether a historically indexed constituent subject has the normative power to bind new citizens arriving with quite distinct historical baggage. A second question is whether Ferrara’s Rawlsian-Michelmanian take is different from, and superior to, the Habermasian account of constituent power, especially to Habermas’s constructive views on supranational constitution-making. Both questions address whether Ferrara’s historically indexed account is sufficiently open to future developments.

Truthfulness, pluralism and the ethics of democratic representation

It is sometimes suggested that even democratic politicians need to dirty their hands in ways that render hypocrisy, lying and deception unavoidable and even justified. By contrast, we draw on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism to argue that the ‘reasonable disagreements’ occasioned by the ‘fact of pluralism’ that make democratic politics necessary can only be resolved in ways congruent with democratic norms if politicians are truthful in Bernard Williams’ sense, and adhere to the related virtues of ‘sincerity’ and ‘accuracy’. Supplementing Eric Beerbohm’s ‘relational model’ of campaign ethics with Suzanne Dovi’s account of the ‘good representative’, we argue that these both entail the virtues of truthfulness. We contend the contemporary crisis of representation associated with the rise of technocracy and populism can be linked to the ways both undermine these virtues through their common rejection of pluralism and the related need for truthfulness. Consequently, both involve deformations of ‘good’ democratic representation.

The body politic has private parts: market creation as a policymaking tool

Abstract Philosophical arguments about government contracting either categorically oppose it on legitimacy grounds or see it as largely anodyne. I argue for a normatively distinct kind of contracting – the advance market commitment, or AMC – and show that it is justified by the same liberal values that justify the welfare state.

Dissatisfaction with a Slogan: A Comparative Theology between the Politics of the Church and the Theology of Liberalism

This essay offers a comparative theology between the politics of the church and the theology of liberalism. In the fraught conversations about the church and politics in our present-day context, this essay offers a way forward that avoids the pitfalls of anachronistic readings of the New Testament, the coopting of theology by partisan ideologies, the emptying of Christian claims of their distinctive theological idioms, and the desire of the church to be in control. Drawing on recent scholarship on the theology of political liberalism and classical conceptions of the church as polis, this essay brings the politics of the church and the theology of liberalism into a critical comparative dialogue. It offers a helpful way forward for church leaders who seek to be faithful to the politics of the church and engaged in the world in these divisive times.

Lost in translation: The normative and the historical

I am intrigued by the use of the words ‘embedded’ and ‘capacity’ as they appear in what I take to be the strategy of Sovereignty Across Generations where these words are used to make what is evidently implicit within John Rawls’s political liberalism explicit, that is, a normative account of ‘the justice and legitimacy of political orders’. If I am correct about this strategy, my question is quite simple: is something lost in translation in this transition from Rawls’s more historical to this normative orientation? I conclude with a positive comment on the potential that a theory of temporality has for the development of a notion of political self-constitution as it pertains to the transition from ethnos to demos.

“I can’t tell you what freedom is ’cause I’ve never seen it”: Addressing the Omission of Liberation Narratives in Sociology

ABSTRACT While liberation, or the process of freeing marginalized individuals and groups from societal oppression and domination, is referenced across many sub-disciplines of sociology, it surprisingly remains under-conceptualized in sociological literature. To address this omission, the present study responds to the following query: how, if at all, do Black individuals conceive of a Black liberated future? I draw on data from 65 in-depth interviews with Black Millennials during Black Lives Matter to capture their imaginings of a Black liberated future. Findings reveal that participants construct four types of liberation narratives when detailing their perceptions of Black freedom: 1) Liberation via Reformation, 2) Liberation via Reconstruction, 3) Liberation via Afrocentrism, and 4) Liberation as Inconceivable. I ultimately argue that liberation narratives function as resistant knowledge projects and, as such, are significant socio-political artifacts and resources for future generations of change agents, community organizers, and social movements actors. Altogether, this study demonstrates how rectifying the omission of liberation narratives magnifies our sociological knowledge about marginalized groups and deepens our analytic capacity to make sense of their ontological approaches toward politics of liberation and imaginings of their collective futures.

Abortion Law Illiberalism and Feminist Politics in Comparative Perspective

Since the 1970s, a liberal politics has dominated comparative abortion law, one almost too ubiquitous to name. This article tracks departures from liberal abortion law in Europe and the Americas that have reshaped the field of comparative abortion law. Section 2 examines the repurposing of liberal abortion law for illiberal ends in a conservative moment of authoritarian governments and their anti-gender campaigns. Drawing on larger ideas of autocratic legalism, the article analyzes how governments and courts have used the features of liberal abortion law to revoke or defeat abortion rights. Section 3 examines the counter-emergence of a feminist protest politics that has abandoned liberal abortion law in a democratic remaking of society and state. Today, in abortion lawmaking through democratized institutions and in the unmaking of abortion law through direct action, feminist movements are reclaiming comparative abortion law and its politics.

Political liberalism, dualist democracy and the call to constituent power

Political liberalism, dualist democracy and the call to constituent power

Jacqueline Audry’s Colette films: post-war quality style with a feminist edge

ABSTRACT Jacqueline Audry was that rare phenomenon, a woman film director in mid-twentieth century France. Drawn to Colette’s work by her appreciation of the latter’s style and close affinity with her values, Audry fought the initial reluctance of producers and went on to make three films based on Colette’s fictions, all with the author’s approval and the first, Gigi (1949), with her active collaboration. Very much in the ‘quality’ style, these entertaining costume dramas set in the prosperous, liberal era of the Belle Époque gave cinematic form to Colette’s stylistic verve and implicitly feminist philosophy. Audry’s Colette films tell stories of young women on a quest for self-realisation against the constraints of a patriarchal society and are laced with an (often humorous) irony in their representation of gender roles. Audry’s case, this article aims to show, demonstrates that the quality style so reviled by the New Wave could in fact be a form of cinema that effectively combined popular appeal with the seriousness of a subtly progressive feminist politics.

Can Mindful Politics Be Meaningful Politics? Socially Engaged Buddhism as a Political Project within a Liberal Political Order

Throughout the Western political world, and particularly in the United States, contemporary Buddhist political thought has largely become synonymous with the movement of mindful politics, also known as Socially Engaged Buddhism. Focusing primarily on issues of social, economic, and environmental justice, mindful politics has found a natural ally in Western left-wing and progressive movements to the degree that Buddhist political thought in the United States is now seemingly indistinguishable from these Western political positions as a practical matter. While the practical alliance of Socially Engaged Buddhism and progressivism is well established, what is less clear is what the movement of mindful politics brings to this relationship beyond its Buddhist veneer. By basing its political project on the secularization of Buddhist compassion (karuṇā), mindful politics fails in creating a political project which can be compelling to those outside of the confines of Buddhist religious belief and practice. While the mindful politics movement and contemporary liberal progressivism share an overlap in policy commitments, the religious roots of Buddhist mindful politics ultimately preclude it from properly aligning with the pluralistic requirements of the prevailing liberal political order. This article will examine the foundations of Socially Engaged Buddhism and explore the standing of the possibility of Socially Engaged Buddhism as the foundation for a political project within the confines of a liberal political order.

Market Nation: Forging Economic Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century African America

Abstract This essay engages with the civic possibilities African Americans perceived in the social, economic, and political transformations associated with the antebellum market revolution. Against the emerging nineteenth-century hegemony of political and economic liberalism, African Americans formulated an ideal of economic citizenship that translated Black material successes and social mobility into an extra-legal symbolic citizenship; in particular, class stratification among African Americans was mobilized to counter the presumption of immutable, ontological Black abjection that justified ascriptive Jacksonian civic exclusions. The essay engages with two proto-sociological texts designed to challenge these exclusions by depicting stratified African American communities that testified to African Americans’ market participation in and contributions to the nation. As insiders of their respective groups, authors Joseph Willson—Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia (1841)—and Cyprian Clamorgan—The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (1858)—innovate a vernacular sociology that cobbles together political economy, proto-social science, reform and literary discourses to fashion empirical, reparative accounts of their better-off African American communities. Engaging with these texts allows us to understand the role that regional specificity played in formulating race, class, and status across an expanding nation, but more importantly, it makes us aware of the perils and ambiguities involved in making African Americans’ participation in the liberal marketplace, or economic citizenship, the basis of African American civic legitimacy.

Nuclear energy and international relations: the external strategy of Russia’s Rosatom

AbstractThis article analyses the role of nuclear energy in global politics today through the perspective of three International Relations theories: realism, liberalism and dependency theory. It contends that concepts developed to investigate oil and gas geopolitics do not always apply to the nuclear sector due to its greater complexity. The supply chain for nuclear power involves different, interrelated stages—notably the provision of natural uranium, of enriched uranium, and the construction and servicing of nuclear reactors—which have distinct leading suppliers and relationships of dependence. We illustrate this through a case study of Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom. Rosatom leads in the provision of enriched uranium and reactor construction. This enables Russia to deepen economic and political relations with Rosatom’s clients. Even after its attack on Ukraine, Russia has not ‘weaponized’ Rosatom’s international business. Its strategy focuses on consolidating its reputation as a trustworthy partner, especially in the Global South and China.

Afterlives of Saint-Simonianism: Michel Chevalier and nineteenth-century French liberalism

ABSTRACT This article examines the evolution of nineteenth-century French economist Michel Chevalier’s reputation and self-understanding as a Saint-Simonian. Despite only having served two years as chief editor of the famous Saint-Simonian Globe, Chevalier’s attempt to re-integrate himself into liberal intellectual circles following his split from the Saint-Simonian movement was consistently hindered by his perceived adherence to its illiberal principles. This article mobilizes Chevalier’s reputation as a means to explore the porous boundary between Saint-Simonianism and French liberalism at a time when the contours between the two traditions were still not clearly defined. I also argue that the economist’s continued prioritization of economic development over political liberty grounded a variety of liberalism that many political liberals found intolerable, notably in its willingness to endure Bonapartist authoritarianism for the sake of economic growth. Mobilizing new archival material from the Second Empire, this article illuminates how Chevalier and others understood his relation to Saint-Simonianism and liberalism in the moment when he was at the apogee of his power and influence.