Neither Hayek nor Habermas

The rise of the blogosphere raises important questions about the elicitation and aggregation of information, and about democracy itself. Do blogs allow people to check information and correct errors? Can we understand the blogosphere as operating as a kind of marketplace for information along Hayekian terms? Or is it a vast public meeting of the kind that Jurgen Habermas describes? In this article, I argue that the blogosphere cannot be understood as a Hayekian means for gathering dispersed knowledge because it lacks any equivalent of the price system. I also argue that forces of polarization characterize the blogosphere as they do other social interactions, making it an unlikely venue for Habermasian deliberation, and perhaps leading to the creation of information cocoons. I conclude by briefly canvassing partial responses to the problem of polarization.     

British Muslim Political Participation: After Bradford

In this article I argue that there is a significant generational shift within British Pakistani communities in relation to political participation and civic engagement. Using George Galloway's March 2012 by‐election victory in Bradford West and an analysis of primary empirical research conducted amongst British Pakistani communities between 2005–2007, and, 2011, I argue that kinship‐based bloc voting—a feature of British Pakistani political engagement in UK politics—is being challenged. A younger generation of British Pakistanis want politicians to engage with them as individuals rather than politicians assuming their votes through co‐opting Pakistani community elders in a system of patronage politics, an arrangement which has been in place since mass immigration from the subcontinent in the 1950s and 60s.     

Politics and enlightenment: Kant and Derrida on cosmopolitan responsibility

Walter Benjamin once remarked of the enterprise of translation ‘that it is nowhere’: that the labour of transcribing the sense, inflection and difference of any particular language and text must always situate the translator in a space which is neither ‘of the original, nor ‘of the language into which it is to be transcribed. This ‘non‐position’ of the translator—between the original and its analogue, between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’, the difference and the acceptability of the text—marks the labour of translation as an ethical responsibility: that of communicating the significance of something—a gesture, a story, a custom, a tradition—which has appeared to this/our socio‐linguistic culture as strange and unfathomably alien; and to achieve this communication without annulling its strangeness, its alterity. The purpose of my comparison of Kant and Derrida's remarks on cosmopolitical responsibility therefore, is fourfold. First, I want to suggest that it is this ‘stricture’ of translation—this difficult responsibility of both judging and respecting the difference of foreign’ cultures—which marks the (non‐Kantian, non‐situated) ‘territory’ of cosmopolitical responsibility. Second, by using Kant's remarks on the relationship between the political evolution of European Enlightenment culture and a possible world confederation of sovereign states, I want to point up the hierarchies and secondarizations involved in the determination of universal standards of moral, ethical and political conduct (even if these standards are originally prosecuted as the legislative conditions of a ‘radical democracy'). Third, I want to look at the ways in which the stricture of translation has been articulated as a theory of ‘global’ responsibility—particularly in the divergent ethical and political approaches of Jurgen Habermas and Jean‐Francois Lyotard. Fourth, I want to suggest that it is Derrida's idea of a ‘dual responsibility’ of critical thought to the political and philosophical resources of European Enlightenment and to the difference of non‐European nations and cultures, that marks the difficulty (the stricture) of acting responsibly within the global economics of power, identity and legislation. I want, in other words, to show that the ‘nowhere’ of Benjamin's translator, is a ‘place’ whose possibility demands a certain ‘Kantian’ right of reflection; that is, the right to pursue the ‘transcendent’ principle of respect for the other.     

O,The Roast Beef of Old England! Brexit and Gastronationalism

‘Gastronationalism’ is the idea that there are distinctive and authentic national food cultures that are threatened by the forces of globalisation. It is a myth: there are no unique or authentically distinctive national culinary cultures. But the idea of gastronationalism is a powerful one that can have important political effects, as Brexit shows. In this article, I chart the rise of British food with regard to Britain’s historical relationship with Europe and the EU. I consider how different understandings of British food culture—one more nativist, one more cosmopolitan—have played a symbolic role in the debate on Brexit, before considering the broader relationship between contemporary populist nationalism and gastronationalism.     

The power and politics of blogs

The rise of bloggers raises the vexing question of why blogs have any influence at all, given their relatively low readership and lack of central organization. We argue that to answer this question we need to focus on two key factors—the unequal distribution of readers across weblogs, and the relatively high readership of blogs among journalists and other political elites. The unequal distribution of readership, combined with internal norms and linking practices allows interesting news and opinions to rise to the “top” of the blogosphere, and thus to the attention of elite actors, whose understanding of politics may be changed by frames adopted from the blogosphere.     

The Left's New Urbanism

The idea of suburbia, or the suburban, or the suburbs, can imply a number of different things. Suburbia suggests a physical place, in general the outskirts of a city or large town; suburban can infer a certain lifestyle; and the idea of the suburbs is often used to identify a community or class of people who inhabit a specific territory. In politics, these terms can also retain various meanings in terms of geography, culture or community. Alongside the ideas of the urban or the rural, they are often used to debate questions of political strategy and shifting electoral coalitions. In this article, ideas of urban and suburban places, cultures and communities are used to consider wider debate regarding future coalitions and strategy within the modern left, specifically a renewed urban politics that can be identified. This new ‘urbanism’ suggests a geographical realignment—partly on cultural or lifestyle grounds—which is significant within an overall attempt to redefine the ‘base’ of the left in terms of class and community. This article considers these issues with reference to what historically has been described as the ‘Progressive Dilemma’.     

Reconciling cultural diversity with a democratic community: Mestizaje as opposed to the usual suspects

A fascinating development within the liberal‐communitarian debate is how to deal with cultural diversity in increasingly heterogeneous democracies. Particularly noteworthy are Will Kymlicka's recasting of liberalism to deal with cultural minorities, especially the indigenous peoples of Canada and Charles Taylor's and Michael Walzer's articulation of a ‘deep diversity’ with regard to the federal relationship of Quebec to Canada as a whole. Both approaches, though, insufficiently address how combinations of cultures have been underway in the Americas for the past 500 years. Instead, I contend that mestizaje, the combination of cultures which has ensued in Mexico and the United States Southwest, articulates a ‘unity in diversity’ in which cultures transform each other without culminating in assimilation. To bolster my exegesis of mestizaje from the works of the Virgil Elizondo and Gloria Anzaldua, I accent how Jeremy Waldron's cosmopolitanism, Iris Marion Young's relational group theory, and Homi Bhabha's hybridity similarly illustrate how proposals such as Kymlicka's or Taylor/Walzer's insufficiently incorporate how integral heterogeneity is to cultural identity. In view of how ‘the border’ between the United States and Mexico exemplifies the growing intersection of diverse cultures from the developed and developing world, mestizaje offers that the intersection of multiple cultures in collaborative—not hegemonic—relations is intrinsic to realizing democratic citizenship.     

How Does Race Affect Perceptions of Police Trustworthiness?

While race is often discussed in relation to police, there is still little empirical evidence on the role of race in shaping citizens’ evaluations of government performance. Using an experimental design, this study examines how different levels of police performance affect perceptions of police trustworthiness and to which degree observed effects vary by individual race and across communities with different racial makeups. Specifically, we study the effect of different levels of performance on perceived trustworthiness in two communities—one predominantly African American and one predominantly White—and replicate across two samples: a sample consisting of primarily White participants and another consisting of only African American participants. Results indicate that the interaction between the racial composition of a community and individual race plays a critical role in shaping the effects of performance among White participants, who appeared more sensitive to community context than African American participants. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Place,Time, and Philanthropy: Exploring Geographic Mobility and Philanthropic Engagement

America is a nation of movers, and this has implications for public and nonprofit managers who rely on donations and volunteers to increase the capacity of nonprofits and to strengthen local communities. This article explores the impact of time and place on philanthropic engagement, focusing on how three aspects of community—sense of belonging, social connections, and regional culture—are related to volunteering and giving to local organizations. The authors find that geographic mobility affects philanthropic engagement. Drawing on a survey of active older Americans, the authors find that three community factors —sense of community, social networks, and regional cultures— are related to one or both types of philanthropic behavior. The authors conclude by offering thoughts for future research and practice.     

Lingua franca and linguistic territoriality. Why they both matter to justice and why justice matters for both

The bottom line of my book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford University Press, 2011, paperback 2015) can roughly be captured in the combination of two recommendations: that the democratization of competence English as a lingua franca should be fostered in Europe and elsewhere and that language communities should be allowed to protect their language against the invasion of English and other powerful languages by imposing their own language in public communication and public education within some territorial boundaries. Most of my critics attack one or the other of these recommendations and some question some of the presuppositions of my whole approach. In this response, I try to refute some of these critiques by clarifying my claims or spelling out my arguments, and I make whatever concessions I believe are required.     

Social funds and local government: the case of Malawi

Two instruments—social funds and decentralization—are currently quite popular policy instruments being adopted in many developing countries throughout the world. Each of these instruments is currently being used or is being implemented in Malawi, Africa. While each instrument is intended to improve the flow of public services in a locality, the article discusses how each has certain potential theoretical advantages over the other. The article then goes on to describe and analyze the flow of resources to Malawian communities under the two largest social action programs, neither of which currently relies on substantial inputs, financial or human, from local governments. The data illustrates a wide disparity in the per capita amounts allocated to these demand‐driven initiatives across districts but also shows the relatively diverse set of local public services supported by the funds. The article close with a discussion of how these two initiatives might be merged within the context of the new Local Government Act 1998, under which local services are to be devolved in the near future. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resistance in hopeles’: Assimilating queer theory

This paper seeks to assimilate Queer Theory, i.e. to bring it within the gambit of a ‘mainstream’ or ‘dominant’ space: the academy. It does so by historicising Queer Theory, and investigating, if not what it is, then at least what it has been. This makes it possible to engage critically with Queer Theory, Suggesting that Queer Theory has often employed tropes of assimilation, the paper turns to another cultural site at which such language is popular—science fiction—in order to investigate the assumption of these metaphors. It goes on to suggest some of the assumptions about cultures which underlie these metaphors. Finally, it points to other sites in Queer Theory which undermine these assumptions, and provide other ways—quite uninterested in assimilation—in which to think Queer.     

Blogging and political information: truth or truthiness?

Does the blogosphere generate truth, or what Stephen Colbert calls ‘truthiness,’ facts or concepts one only wishes or believes were true? Bloggers and the mainstream media face the same difficulties if they wish to rely on the blogosphere as a generator of truth. First, both bloggers and media converge on a small number of key blogs as sources of information. But the proprietors of these elite blogs are likely to resist information that doesn’t conform to their existing attitudes and beliefs, precisely because they are already highly aware of politics. Second, blogs and blog readers are likely to separate themselves into smaller networks according to their particular tastes. However, under some circumstances the blogosphere may still approximate a parallel processing statistical estimator of the truth with ‘nice’ properties. The key to this outcome is that judgments are independent, and that problems of polarization are mitigated.     

论个人信息保护模式

对于个人信息的保护问题,当代世界大致可分为两种模式:一是以美国为代表的行业自律与单行立法相结合模式,二是以欧洲为代表的立法综合规制模式。这两种模式的差别导致的结果是,国家对个人信息保护的侧重点具有很大不同。这种差异的原因追根溯源在于,美国与欧洲的历史文化与政治哲学传统不同。我国对个人信息的保护不应当采用单一模式,而应实行立法规制与行业自律相结合的综合模式。     

Lost Cause-ism in American Southerners’ News Writing About the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996)

In this article, I analyze how writers for newspapers in the American South used a culturally salient story about the past—the Myth of the Lost Cause—to make sense of an event in the present—the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996). I take a Proppian approach, according to which a story’s plot is defined as a set of functions, or generalized acts that influence course of the story’s action. Stories that appear to be different thus can share the same plot, inasmuch as they are composed of the same functions. I argue that, to construct narratives about the First Russo-Chechen War, Southern news writers substituted concrete actions from the conflict in Chechnya into the familiar functions that make up the plot of the Lost Cause. I use a combination of discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis to show how those functions appear in five Southern news accounts of the First Russo-Chechen War.     

Inequities in enforcement? Environmental justice and government performance

This paper examines whether state governments perform systematically less environmental enforcement of facilities in communities with higher minority and low‐income populations. Although this is an important claim made by environmental justice advocates, it has received little attention in the scholarly literature. Specifically, I analyze state regulatory enforcement of three U.S. pollution control laws—the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act—over the period 1985–2000. To test for disparities in enforcement, I estimate a series of count models and find strong evidence across each of the three environmental laws that states perform less enforcement in poor counties, but little evidence of race‐based inequities. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Articulating language oppression: colonialism,coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages

ABSTRACT

Roche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language discrimination, or ‘linguicism’. Roche explores one aspect of linguicism—language erasure—and how it relates to language oppression, focusing on Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He examines how language oppression is produced through practices of erasure: the ways in which certain populations and their languages are systematically rendered discursively invisible. He argues that the erasure of certain languages in the Tibetan context is systematically reproduced by two otherwise opposed political projects: the colonial project of the PRC state; and the international Tibet movement that seeks to resist it. He refers to the contingent cooperation between these two opposed projects as ‘articulated oppression’. In concluding the article he examines how the disarticulation of this oppression is a necessary condition for the emancipation of Tibet’s minority languages, and discusses the broader significance of this study for understanding language oppression, and its relation to other forms of oppression.     

Trust Matters: Enhancing Government Legitimacy through Participatory Budgeting

Legitimacy is a problem of contemporary governance. Communities lack trust in elected officials—in their effectiveness, fairness, and representation of the public interest. Participatory budgeting (PB)—a set of democratic processes where residents determine how to spend a public budget—helps bridge that distance by letting the public make spending decisions. Since 2011, some of New York City’s (NYC) council members have been implementing PB with their capital budget—setting aside a million dollars in their districts each budget cycle for PB. Participatory budgeting has the potential to rebuild relationships between government and communities. Using data from over eighty interviews conducted by New York University (NYU) graduate students in 2013 and 2014 with PBNYC participants over two years, this article suggests that in council districts using PB, residents have greater feelings of access to and voice in local government, and better understanding of the complexities of spending public monies, often leading to a more positive view of government officials, and bolstering legitimacy of local government.     

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.     

Can parity of self-esteem serve as the basis of the principle of linguistic territoriality?

In this paper, I argue that Philippe Van Parijs’ argument for the principle of linguistic territoriality rests upon an unexamined and unvindicated assumption, to the effect that most situations in which smaller languages are threatened by larger ones can be assimilated to ‘colonial cases’, that is to cases in which there is injustice as between the two linguistic groups, as opposed to ‘mere number cases’, that is cases in which linguistic groups of different sizes coexist in the absence of injustice. Moreover, I argue that Van Parijs underestimates the amount of coercion that will have to be applied even within linguistically defined territories in order to avoid the erosion of the smaller language.