On Public Action

Abstract

This essay explores Hannah Arendt’s contribution to our understanding of the rhetorical as opposed to the aesthetic quality of public speech, with an emphasis upon her conception of opinion and glory. Arendt’s focus on the revelatory quality of public action in speech is widely understood to preclude or seriously limit its communicative aspect. I argue that this is a misunderstanding, and that accepting it would reduce speech not merely to the discussion of a sharply limited set of topics, but to no topics at all. Public action is speech that reveals the speaker as “answering, talking back and measuring up to whatever happened or was done.” Such revelatory speech is most appropriately judged by the standard of the glorious and the inglorious. Because such speech must inform as well as reveals, so does glorious or great speech rise to the level of greatness in part because of what is said, to whom, where, and how. Arendt’s understanding of this is shown to have significant parallels to the ordinary language philosophy of Stanley Cavell.     

塞尔言语行为理论探析

语言哲学是现代西方哲学的一个重要分支。美国当代哲学家塞尔的“言语行为理论”在英美分析哲学界有一定的影响。他强调从使用和交际的角度研究语言的意义,强调把语言当作人类行为的一部分进行研究,强调对语旨行为的结构、类型及其标准进行分析,从而打破了传统的静态研究语言的模式,为现代语言哲学的发展作出了一定的贡献。对其理论进行剖析,有助于我们对语言现象及其本质的理解。     

When presidential candidates voice party issues,does Twitter listen?

ABSTRACT

Presidential candidates often speak to their party’s issues because parties are thought to have “greater competence on handling” some issues versus others [Petrocik 1996, “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study.” American Journal of Political Science 40 (3): 825–850, 825]. The present study considers whether Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tend to use different vocal inflections when talking about their party’s issues. Using the audio from the three 2016 presidential debates, we not only find Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seem to be more emotionally invested in their party’s issues, but they use distinct vocal patterns which suggest they “own” some issues more than others. To assess whether viewers responded more positively to these different vocal inflections, we used the valence of 428,185 live-tweets. Ultimately, we found Twitter was net-positive when the candidates raised their vocal pitch while talking about their party’s issues. This suggests nonverbal cues are an important component of issue ownership.     

Intersectionality as disarticulatory practice: Sex-Selective abortion and reproductive politics in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Many authors have argued that sex-selective abortion (SSA) poses a problem for defenders of reproductive choice: the notion that a woman has “freely chosen” to abort a female fetus becomes problematic when she faces compelling pressure to bear a male child. This argument reflects the broader concern of the reproductive justice movement that mainstream pro-choice discourse has defined “choice” in narrow, legalistic terms, and overlooks the barriers to reproductive choice often faced by poor women and women of color. This article examines recent debates surrounding a proposed ban on SSA in the United Kingdom. It finds that despite attempts by the ban’s proponents to make intersectional claims around gender, ethnicity, and class, their arguments also invoke xenophobia by constructing Indian migrants as a threat to “British” values of gender equality. Thus, the article suggests that the concept of disarticulation may fruitfully be used to make sense of such “intersectional” claims.     

Civil rights on the white earth reservation

Abstract

The concept of “civil rights” is based on assumptions that do not extend to all lands within U.S. borders, including Native American reservations. A central policy tension exists between enforcing Euro‐American “civil rights” and recognizing Native American sovereignty. This tension is discussed in light of the situation on the White Earth Reservation, one of six reservations that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Four possible means of addressing White Earth civil rights issues are discussed, each with possible applications in other reservation settings. None of the four is found to be clearly effective in gaining the civil rights defined for U.S. citizens for reservation residents. Although the underlying question of the relationship between civil rights and sovereignty defies easy solution, some suggestions are offered.     

“Imagine you are auditioning for the Viennese opera”: masterclasses and the assessment of operatic habitus

Being neither one-to-one classes nor concerts, masterclasses for opera singers are considered locales that provide young singers with an opportunity to perform for a highly esteemed figure in the hopes that the master’s feedback will improve their future performances. However, masterclasses can also be looked at as social texts that read through the means of assessing young trainees on the basis of their potential acceptance into the international culture of opera. Intertwining a linguistic perspective as suggested by de Saussere, which distinguishes between “language” and “speech,” with a Bourdieuian perspective that focuses on habitus and cultural capital enables looking at master classes as arenas for assessing young professionals’ operatic habitus and pointing to the components which constitute cultural capital either cumulative or innate. As such, masterclasses become institutions that reinforce Western supremacy of the operatic world and limit the access of individuals of non-European origin.     

Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949: The Past,Present, and Future of Federal Housing and Urban Policy

Abstract

This article summarizes a special issue of Housing Policy Debate, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Housing Act of 1949. The act is best remembered for its declaration that every American deserves a “decent home and a suitable living environment.” The articles in this collection offer varying perspectives on how this act helped shape the postwar metropolis. The authors—urban planners, historians, and public officials—each consider a different part of the legacy.

The first three articles deal primarily with the act's creation and social and political ramifications, while the next three look at how Titles I, II, and III have influenced the past 50 years of housing and urban policy. The record of the Housing Act of 1949 is mixed, and so are its lessons. There remains an ongoing struggle to find the right mix of housing support to reach the goals first expressed in this landmark legislation.     

Risk Misallocation in Public–Private Partnership Projects in China

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to compare the preferred and actual risk allocation and then to evaluate the impact of risk misallocation (if any) on project performance. The results show a significantly negative relationship between project performance and risk misallocation. The smaller the degree of risk misallocation was, the more successful the project would be. One group of three risks (including “Corruption,” “Government's intervention,” and “Government's reliability”) and the other group of three risks (including “Approval and permit,” “Immature juristic system,” and “Land acquisition”) were found to contribute considerably to the prediction of project performance. This article provides information on the impact of risk misallocation on project performance in China's public–private partnership (PPP) projects. To enter and perform well in China's PPP market, private firms should pay particular attention to the identified risks.     

Ideology in Policy Debates: Congress and the S&Ls in the 1980s

Is a national value such as free enterprise relevant to congressional debates of important economic policy bills? This question was examined using debates of three reform bills that dealt with savings and loan industry problems in the 1980s. To employ free enterprise concepts in justifying policy stands challenged legislators because industry problems contrasted sharply in the early 1980s (overregulation) and later (excesses under deregulation). Research demonstrated, however, that free enterprise concepts dominated the earlier discussions and, intriguingly, were at the center of the 1989 debate about bailing out the industry and reforming it. The conclusion elaborates free enterprise's role and speculates about the influence of another national value on the S & L discussions. Enactment of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery Enforcement Act of 1989¹ capped a decade of congressional struggle with the question of how to treat the problems of federal savings and loan institutions. Popularly known as “thrifts” or “S & Ls,” their status became a matter of increasing concern to Congress as the 1980s unfolded and public indignation over a prospective government bailout of unprecedented proportions mounted. This article focuses on an aspect of this struggle that has a larger significance, namely, the place of national values2 in the genesis of important economic policy statutes. Given the predilections of American society, the value that tends to loom largest in major economic policy debates is popularly know as “free enterprise” or “the market economy.” One may reasonably object that U.S. capitalism operates under a “mixed economy” whose features include enterprises owned or sponsored by the federal government as well as government subsidies and regulation of private businesses. The short answer to this objection is that the term free enterprise is used here in a mythic sense and “myths are an essential starting place for insights into how values shape policy…” (de Neufville and Barton, 1987). In essence, this article examines the following questions: (1) Did congressional debates on proposed statutes relate provisions of the 1980, 1982, and 1989 bills to free enterprise concepts? (2) If so, what adjustments were made in these concepts for the sharply contrasting circumstances encountered by S & Ls in the course of the decade? and (3) How was the peculiar relationship of government deposit insurance of S & L accounts to free enterprise treated in the bills? Two background sections introduce the discussion.     

Special Issue 2019: European and American Political Parties: Becoming More Similar?

ABSTRACT

For theories to be useful across systems requires a fundamental similarity of the things theorized about. In the 1980s, it was easy to question whether European and American political parties were sufficiently of the same “genus” for a single theory of parties to be relevant in both contexts. This paper asks whether that is still the case, identifying several respects in which European and American parties have become more comparable, but also a dimension on which they have become more different.     

Anders Breivik and the Death of Free Speech in Norway

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo and massacred dozens of teenagers at a Labour Party Youth camp on the island of Utøya. Nearly all the media coverage of Breivik focused on the conservative political views outlined in his Manifesto. The week of the massacre, The New York Times ran a series of editorials which identified Breivik as a part of the counterjihad movement represented by Pete King, Bruce Bawer, Geert Wilders, Newt Gingrich, and Robert Spencer. In Norway, the Norwegian media was quick to blame Siv Jensen of the conservative Progress Party for creating the “climate of hate” which produced Breivik. In the wake of the murders, prominent Norwegian intellectuals began calling for a rejection of American “free speech absolutism” in favor of vigorously enforcing an “anti-racism” clause in Norway’s penal code which criminalizes threatening or insulting speech, or speech that incites contempt for anyone because of his or her skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. However, this would contribute little to public safety in Norway; instead it would stifle the kind of vigorous debate about social issues that one would expect to find in an open society. It would also demoralize moderate Muslims who are working to promote free speech and democratic pluralism in Muslim-majority countries.     

Memes as speech acts

Memes are a common way for individuals to communicate online. Internet users often use memes to reply to each other on social networking sites or other online forums. This research argues that memes are successfully used for communication purposes because certain memes (specifically image macros) are essentially speech acts and are also understood as being speech acts by internet users. When creating a meme, choices are made concerning the specific semiotic resources to be used and the internet community then interprets these resources to facilitate communication between the meme creator and the internet community. Memes can be recreated for different purposes and therefore it is possible to group memes under already existing speech acts and speculate about the ways in which these might correspond to speech acts in the future. To accomplish this, a limited amount of specific meme types are analysed and discussed.     

Reconciliation Arguments in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

Recently debates about the worth of “ideal theory” have directed attention to the functions that an account of a perfectly just society can serve. One function is that of “reconciliation”: learning that a seemingly undesirable feature of the social world would exist even in the perfectly just society can show us the value that it has in the present as well. John Rawls has emphasized reconciliation as among the roles of political philosophy. For instance, Rawls claims that his theory of justice can reconcile us to the pluralism of liberal democracies. In this essay, I argue that Rawls’s political theory also can reconcile the inhabitants of liberal democratic societies to the fact that such societies may be cognitively confusing on account of their complexity. Then I contend that Rawls’s work offers valuable theoretical resources for analysing a society’s transparency or lack thereof.     

Camera as sign: on the ethics of unconcealment in documentary film and video

When we look at a documentary, what do we see? Probably not the apparatus that gives us images to view. If we did, then perhaps questions about the ethics of documentary cinema would be easily answered. The goal of this article is to broaden the moralistic purview of image ethics debates with a semiotic phenomenology of the visual mode of address of documentary. I describe how “doubling” and “redoubling” the visual mode of address undermines the authority of documentary and helps to overcome debates about two main ethical issues – participant consent and the audience's right to information. Unconcealing the viewpoint of documentary also broadens media ethics debates by bringing attention to the implied viewer, asking of it to reflect on the consequences of the communicative act of looking. Examples of widely available documentary film and video are discussed.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.     

Are We the Walking Dead? Zombie Apocalypse as Liberatory Art

Abstract

Marcuse argued that subversive visions of a better reality can emerge from “low” as well as “high” culture, from within as well as outside the repressive apparatus. This article leverages Marcuse’s aesthetic theory to consider whether the enormously popular AMC cable series, The Walking Dead, might be considered emancipatory art. Set in a post-neoliberal America suffering through a zombie apocalypse, the dark, existential themes and urgent political ambivalences of this series reflect collective yearnings, tensions, and fissures in the current social reality worth attending to. I argue that The Walking Dead does have emancipatory potential, in that it addresses “depth dimension” concerns that occupied Marcuse; reflects disillusionment with core aspects of American neoliberalism; and reaches for less repressive, more life-affirming, alternative political visions. Time will tell if the show will sustain such visions or surrender to the status quo.     

Justice,Charity, and Disaster Relief: What,If Anything,Is Owed to Haiti,Japan, and New Zealand?

Whenever fellow humans suffer due to natural catastrophes, we have a duty to help them. This duty is not only acknowledged in moral theory but also expressed in ordinary people's reactions to phenomena such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Despite being widely acknowledged, this duty is also widely disputed: some believe it is a matter of justice, others a matter of charity. Although central to debates in international political theory, the distinction between justice and charity is hardly ever systematically drawn. To fill this gap in the literature, I consider three accounts of this distinction— the “agent‐based,” the “recipient‐based,” and the “mixed” view—and argue that they are all unsatisfactory. I then offer a fourth alternative, the “autonomy” view, which successfully overcomes the difficulties affecting its rivals. I conclude by considering the implications of this view for the moral grounds of disaster relief in earthquake‐stricken Haiti, New Zealand, and Japan.     

A Review of: “Organizational Knowledge. The Texture of Workplace Learning by Silvia Gherardi with the Collaboration of Davide Nicolini”

ABSTRACT

This article provides new empirical evidence about Flemish municipal councilors’ use of financial information in the yearly budget debate. Since councilors generally do not handle information according to “standard use models,” we adopt an innovative method of data collection by scrutinizing their speech for the presence of financial information during the budget debate in Flemish municipalities. The incorporation of financial information in councilors’ contributions to the debate is conceptualized as a particular form of observable use of financial information. We quantitatively assess the presence of both budgetary and accrual financial information using a scoring technique taken from the management accounting literature. Additionally, we analyze whether various political and financial circumstances affect politicians’ mentioning of this information in their deliberations. Our results reveal a strong prevalence of budgetary information in councilors’ speech. This is influenced by both political conditions and the financial position of the municipality.     

‘Strangers in their own land’: Powellism’s policy impact

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Solomos provides an account of the impact of Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on policy agendas about race relations and immigration. He argues that Powell’s intervention helped to shape policy frames around race and immigration in its immediate aftermath and beyond. By exploring the impact of the speech on the policy climate, his paper argues that perhaps the most important aspect of the speech is the way it helped to shape the policy agendas of both the Conservative and Labour parties, even as Powell himself was marginalized from mainstream politics. He concludes by suggesting that Powell’s intervention links up with contemporary debates and preoccupations about race and immigration.     

The war on solicitation and intersectional subjection: quality-of-life policing as a tool to control transgender populations

Abstract

The selective enforcement of solicitation laws on transgender individuals—often referred to as “walking while trans”—has an especially pernicious effect on transgender people of color, immigrants, and the poor. Intersectional subjection—the interaction between multiple categories of identity and diffuse power and sources of authority within contemporary American society—facilitates processes of governmentality and makes some transgender individuals more vulnerable to forms of social control such as trans-profiling. Using intersectional subjection to analyze the selective enforcement of solicitation laws exposes how trans-profiling (1) works to marginalize and remove transgender people of color and transgender immigrants from public spaces; and (2) enforces raced and classed gender norms and reifies white cis-heteronormative privilege. The concepts of intersectionality, subjection, and governmentality elucidate the mutually constitutive relationships among informal and formal actors and institutions in sanctioning the profiling of individuals for “walking while trans” as a tool for mitigating the threat transgender people of color and trans-immigrants pose to dominant power structures and narratives.