Challenges confronting nonprofit housing organizations’ self‐sufficiency programs

Abstract

In recent years, interest has grown at the federal level in strategies to combine subsidized housing with programs promoting household self‐sufficiency. This article explores how nonprofit housing organizations conceptualize their self‐sufficiency programs for their residents. A broad definition of self‐sufficiency is presented—one that is not exclusively focused on the individual and, instead, also includes program strategies that are focused on changing the context in which individuals live and work.

The paper then analyzes the relationship between the self‐sufficiency strategies being implemented in the nonprofit housing world and how these organizations will be affected by welfare reform, the shrinking and restructuring of federally subsidized housing, the emergence of block grant job training and workforce development programs, and the general devolution of government programs into ever more fungible pots at state and local levels. These transformations in the domestic policy agenda will present challenges to nonprofit housing organizations and to the goal of promoting self‐sufficiency.     

From permanent employment to massive lay-offs: the political economy of ‘transitional unemployment’ in urban China (1993–8)

Abstract

The idea that economic activities may be described and studied as ‘embedded’ in social relations has been central to much debate in recent economic sociology. The present paper analyses legal struggles over the status of begging in US law and argues that conflicting rhetorical accounts of begging illustrate social actors’ efforts to articulate the interconnectedness of their social world, including the ways in which economic practices are embedded in their social and institutional contexts. The paper thus suggests that embeddedness is not just something identified by social researchers, but also a problem faced by social actors as they try to understand the socio-economic order in which they live and act. By arguing for or against the claim that begging is simultaneously an economic action and the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, the voices in this debate attempted to affect the future of this marginal economic activity.     

Landscape as Symbolic Form: Remembering Thick Place in Deep Time

Abstract

The current intense concern with landscape in the arts and social theory is seen as a response to the shaking of the Modern world-view, which has attended the growing awareness of the ecology crisis. The dilemmas associated with developing a new conception of the relationship between humans and the natural world is explored through a critical engagement with the work of Heidegger and Habermas. The article develops a symbolic conception of landscape as a place where the human world and the earth meet and a new sense of the human condition set within ecological constraints can be articulated and reflected upon.     

Philosophy,Social Hope and Democratic Criticism: Critical Theory for a Global Age

Abstract

The attempt to connect philosophy and social hope has been one of the key distinguishing features of critical theory as a tradition of enquiry. This connection has been questioned forcefully from the perspective of a post-philosophical pragmatism, as articulated by Rorty. In this article I consider two strategies that have been adopted by critical theorists in seeking to reject Rorty's suggestion that we should abandon the attempt to ground social hope in philosophical reason. We consider argumentative strategies of the philosophical anthropologist and of the rational proceduralist. Once the exchanges between Rorty and these two strands of critical theory have been reconstructed and assessed, an alternative perspective emerges. It is argued that philosophical reasoning best helps to sustain social hope in a rapidly changing world when we consider it in terms of the practice of democratic criticism.     

Marcuse: A Critic in Counterrevolutionary Times

Abstract

As a critique of neoliberalism, this article considers Marcuse’s formulations on “paralysis of criticism” presented in his seminal text One-Dimensional Man. This is not a pessimistic perspective. Rather, the author promotes a social diagnosis on political struggles, considering the new challenges of advanced industrial societies to radical subjective experiences of emancipation. The article centers upon, it is important to note, a frequent question in Marcuse’s inquiries: How do we think critically in counterrevolutionary times? This is a question that mobilizes dialectics to revolutionary trends as it expresses an effort to re-think traditional categories of Critical Theory in their “obsolescence.” In a world of “no alternatives,” obsolescent categories are symptom of its diseases. Such obsolescence contrasts immediate relations of status quo with “radical” mediations of social forces. It mobilizes criticism in “catalytic” processes to emancipate “centrifugal social forces” from below, a qualitative leap to social changes able to face counterrevolutionary times.     

Comment on James R. Cohen's “abandoned housing: Exploring lessons from Baltimore”

Abstract

For most cities, the possibility of transforming unused property into community and city assets is as yet hypothetical. Fiscal constraints limit the amount of land acquisition, relocation, and demolition that cities can undertake. Private investors, unsure of which neighborhoods have a chance of becoming self‐sustaining, are reluctant to take risks in untested markets.

Cities need to create citywide planning strategies for land aggregation and neighborhood stabilization and to develop analyses of the risks and opportunities associated with redevelopment opportunities in specific markets. Research seems sorely needed. Although the policy world cannot and will not stand still waiting for academics to design the perfect study or to collect all the data to model the potential effects of various policy options and investments, analysis that can play a more immediately supportive role can and should be done now.     

Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory: A New Synthesis

ABSTRACT

Critical Theory and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives share many compatibilities in offering a constructive critique of society. Psychoanalysis teaches us that whatever values and ideals societies adopt, they are always mediated through unconscious psychic processes that condition the collective in both positive and negative ways, and in terms of relations of recognition and patterns of social justice. Contemporary critical theory may benefit from engaging post-classical and current trends in psychoanalytic thought that have direct bearing on the ways we conceive of and observe how individuals operate within social collectives. In particular, Axel Honneth relies on psychoanalytic sources that are dated. Critical theory would profit from engaging post-object relations schools such as self psychology, analytical psychology, psychoanalytic intersubjectivity theory, relationality, and contemporary attachment theory that are more nuanced yet can supplement Winnicottian perspectives. Implications for contemporary theory need to reflect upon how the psychosocial matrix of self and society both facilitate and hinder optimal social arrangements and fabrics of justice as it takes up the question of normativity. It is within this context that I hope to introduce contemporary psychoanalytic paradigms that move beyond classical models yet complement redirecting shifts in emphasis both psychoanalysis and Critical Theory attempt to accomplish. I suggest that an applied psychoanalytic explication on social phenomenology can expand the interpretive depth and breadth of human relations and open up a permissible space for interdisciplinary discourse. Here new vistas emerge for a proposed synthesis between the two schools of thought.     

Timespacing competence: multilingual children's linguistic worlds

Drawing on Kramsch's conceptualization of the multilingual subject and the symbolic self, in this paper, we explore how multilingual children re-signify three intertwined myths about the bilingual student, linguistic diversity and language competence, when, in the researcher-generated activity My linguistic world 2014, they are invited to map and talk about their lived experiences as multiple language users seen in the light of place and movement. By demythifying themselves and their linguistic worlds, the children also raise important questions about the notion of linguistic competence. By perceiving competences from a subjective child perspective, we learn how children do what we call timespacing competence. On that basis, we suggest paying attention to how children themselves timespace competence by focusing (more consistently) on the subjective, social, spatial and temporal dimensions of (knowing) language.     

Civil society in an age of globalization: A neo-Gramscian perspective

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the world has seen an intensification of the globalization processes of social relations, an intensification that has direct implications for the study of contemporary world politics. One important aspect of such implications concerns the emergence of new actors in world politics, not just in national terms, but also at the local, regional and global levels—in other words, approaching the global political economy as a whole. In some sense, it is possible to say that dominant and dominated social groups are being influenced and are influencing such globalization processes, so at present it would be possible to note the rising of a transnational fraction of the capitalist class and the rise of a globalized resistance within the ambit of a civil society influenced by globalization processes. Therefore, the objective of the current article is to analyze the transformation process of social forces in an age of the intensification of globalization of social relations. Put another way, the article assesses the transformations of civil society in an age of globalization that present new dilemmas and possibilities to the collective political agency in the twenty-first century.     

Identity theft and the care of the virtual self

Abstract

This paper analyses how major institutions are publicly responding to the crime of identity theft. It concentrates on how individuals are encouraged to responsibilize themselves against this potentiality, and what they should do in the event they are victimized. These two distinct discourses (prevention and victimization) aim to fashion a hyper-vigilant citizen whose daily routines, home environment, consumption patterns and sense of self are being brought into accord with wider power dynamics. These measures can be understood as encouraging a care of the virtual self – a wider social project characteristic of an informational age that encourages individuals to reduce the risks and maximize the potentialities related to their data double. In the context of identity theft, however, institutionally promoted methods for the care for the virtual self transcend what is reasonably practicable for most citizens and mask the role played by major institutions in fostering the preconditions for identity theft.     

Human Security and the Rise of Private Armies

In parts of the developing world, private armed groups are acquiring sufficient capabilities to challenge the state as the sole legitimate fount of order and stability. As a result, there is emerging a notion of clientele politics in which the loyalty of citizens, rooted as it is in the need for protection, is devolving to sub-state actors with highly questionable motives. The result is a malignant dynamic in which the erosion of the state both stems (in part) from the rise of these private actors and reinforces it as well. In their quest for security, citizens are paradoxically drawn to the very groups that have undermined the social order-flawed though it may have been-and compromised individual security. The cases of Sierra Leone and Colombia are presented here in support of this contention; and while their experiences are certainly idiosyncratic, the broad conclusions they occasion hold true for countless other private armed groups challenging the state elsewhere in the world.     

National renewal in the discourse of neoliberal transition in Britain and Chile

ABSTRACT

The term neoliberalism became associated with processes of economic and social restructuring in various parts of the world during the latter years of the twentieth century. While the importance of these processes is undisputed, the extent to which neoliberalism constitutes a coherent and consistent ideology, or merely a contingent and contextual set of broadly related policies, remains a source of contention. In this article, we explore this question through a comparative analysis of the political discourse of neoliberal transition in Britain and Chile. Drawing on the model of historical comparison developed by Antonio Gramsci, we argue that these two countries represent paradigm cases of the constitutional and authoritarian routes to neoliberalism. However, by focusing on the discourses of national renewal in the speeches and writings of Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet, we argue that both cases rest on a particular articulation of the themes of coercion and consent. As such, we suggest that while each paradigm articulates these themes in distinct ways, it is the relationship between the two that is essential to the political ideology of neoliberalism, as the coercive construction of consensus in Chile and the consensual construction of coercion in Britain.     

The Fundamentalist City,Medieval Modernity,and the Arab Spring

Abstract

The Arab World has witnessed massive popular uprisings that seek to overturn years of authoritarianism and supposedly bring about democratic change and social justice. These uprisings evoke both optimism and pessimism about religion, violence, and their connection to cities. As people in various parts of the Arab world embark on their quest for self-government, there is no telling where this great experiment will lead. Based on current indications, religion will play a decisive role in shaping the futures of these nations, and particularly their cities. These directions seem to be charted by the religious parties that have come to power, and through a series of subtle and gradual policies that are setting the foundations for future theocratic states. The aim of this article is to explore the urban processes by which religious ideologies transform into fundamentalist urban movements, and how their actions are starting to reshape the cities of the Arab World.     

Living in the world risk society

Abstract

In a world risk society, we must distinguish between ecological and financial dangers, which can be conceptualized as side effects, and the threat from terrorist networks as intentional catastrophes; the principle of deliberately exploiting the vulnerability of modern civil society replaces the principle of chance and accident.     

From page to virtual stage: a socio-semiotic reading of stage directions

ABSTRACT

The interrelatedness of text and performance is a feature of semiotic approaches to drama. Because of their relation to performance and to social life, dramatic texts are among the most complex texts. A dramatic text creates an imaginary world which is “staged” in readers’ imaginations. Clarifying the playwright’s vision and facilitating transformation of the play from text to performance, stage directions are key components for the interaction with readers and spectators. Stage directions act as useful interventions which lead the readers to the world of the play and guide them to imagine the three-dimensional stage space. The receivers of the dramatic text complete their semiotization through adding their own interpretation to a virtual performance which they then place against any performance they see. This paper investigates how stage directions function as a focalizing element of the text which are important to the interpretive possibilities of a play. The paper probes how stage directions can be illuminated by the sensitive application of socio-semiotics to the encoding of motifs and stage imagery in dramatic texts as a meeting point of life, culture and imagination that generates meanings which are highly sensitive to receivers’ social and cultural backgrounds. Examples from stage directions as an integral part in the plays of Sam Shepard, an American writer, will be the focus of the analysis.     

A Longue Durée Approach to the Role of Civil Society in the Uprisings against Authoritarianism in the Arab world

Abstract

This article will show how a ‘new history’, inspired from longue durée approaches, can be methodologically applied, and how it equips us with analytical tools that improve our capacity to understand the long-term changes that fostered the civil society-based resistance in the Arab world. Although we cannot predict the exact timing of such resistance efforts, the application of the longue durée method provides us with tools that help us understand why and how the many uprisings transpired. This complements, and partly contrasts with, most previous research, which had its main focus on discussion of short-term factors that were claimed to have caused the Arab mass-mobilized resistance in 2010–2011. The article draws upon and intends to contribute to the theoretical debate on contentious politics within social movement research, resistance studies, and civil society-driven democratization research.     

House organ

“The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the geopolitical and ideological upheavals this has caused have altered the nature of class struggle throughout the world. Without the Soviet Communist Party, parties in the rest of the world have lost legitimacy and their claim to leadership of the working class. The basic tension between capital and labor remains, but the traditional means of addressing working class and minority grievances have necessarily changed. Without either a model or a support base — the two possibilities that the Soviets offered the working classes of other countries — those demanding economic and social justice must confront capital with new forms of organization and struggle.”     

Comment on William M. Rohe and Rachel G. Bratt's “failures,downsizings, and mergers among community development corporations”: Defending community development corporations or defending communities?

Abstract

An overemphasis on preserving community development corporations (CDCs) may confuse the ends with the means. The end is empowered, self‐sustaining communities of place and identity. CDCs are one means of trying to get there, and there are many communities in which CDCs are helpful, and, indeed, empowering. However, the trends we are seeing—failures, downsizings, and mergers—may tell us that it is time to look for alternatives to CDCs.

If we truly care about poor communities, those of us with the resources to find the best community development models should be searching for them. We do not have good data to show whether community organizing is a better strategy than CDCs for achieving community development, but it is a strategy that merits exploration.     

The interplay of (semiotic) technologies and genre: the case of the selfie

ABSTRACT

The selfie is one of the most widely publicized, criticized, and debated visual phenomena of our time. However, formulating a definition of the selfie is not straightforward, as visual clues – be they representational or compositional – alone are not sufficient for identification. Recognizing an image as a selfie, rather than a portrait, often requires viewers to interpret the image in relation to the technological and sociocutural context in which the photo was taken and shared. In this paper, we consider the technological conditions that have shaped the evolution of the selfie as a visual genre. Central to our discussion is the premise that the selfie is not simply a genre for self-representation, but means of generating various perspectives: that of the selfie maker, the represented visual participant, and the viewer identification. This unique perspective-generating affordance of the selfie is both facilitated and constrained by the various technologies involved in selfie practices. On the one hand, the technological and physical constraints of the smart phone camera give rise to a specific form of “distorted” look which makes certain types of selfie possible. On the other hand, social media platforms facilitate the sharing of selfies, which results in increasingly stylized and creative ways in which perspectives of the self can be represented, negotiated, and, in the case of selfies manipulated via apps, augmented.     

Gated communities in America: Walling out the world?

Abstract

Gated communities—enclaves of homes surrounded by walls, often with security guards—are becoming increasingly popular in America. This article introduces and analyzes findings of a Fannie Mae Foundation—sponsored panel on gated communities held at the 1997 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference. A key finding is that many people choose to reside in gated communities because they believe that such places reduce risk, ranging from the mundane (e.g., unwanted social exchanges) to the high stakes (e.g., declining home values).

In many ways, gated communities deliver what they promise, by providing an effective defense against daily intrusions. However, some of their benefits entail a high social cost. A sense of community within gated communities comes at the expense of a larger identity with the region outside. Gated communities manifest and reinforce an inward‐focused community culture, where the tension between the individual and society tilt toward self‐interest.