Euroscepticism and Right-Wing Extremist Attitudes in Germany: A Result of the ‘Dialectic Nature of Progress’?

Euroscepticism is associated with a new cleavage between the ‘losers’ and the ‘winners’ of globalisation. Current research also indicates that right-wing extremist, racist, and anti-democratic attitudes are more prevalent in lower status groups, particularly those struggling with societal change. These findings are combined with a unique data set covering both topics and thus add to the growing literature on Euroscepticism while also exploring the divide between the ‘losers’ and ‘winners’ of modernisation processes. The article introduces categories of occupational status groups, namely the ‘engaged’, the ‘skilled workers’, and the ‘legworkers’, which represent different levels of involvement in modernisation processes. It explores the differences in attitudes between these groups and how those differences correlate with citizens' professional status. It is concluded that perceived subjective alienation, which manifests in racist and anti-democratic attitudes, best explains EU-scepticism.     

theatres of difference: the politics of ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’ in the plays of contemporary Black and Asian women playwrights in Britain

Since the 1990s, there has been an extended debate among feminists and left-wing thinkers concerned with notions of justice and equality about the relationship between ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’ in contemporary politics. In this article, I examine the ways in which the issues of redistribution of resources and recognition are articulated in plays by contemporary Black and Asian women playwrights such as Rukhsana Ahmad, Tanika Gupta, Winsome Pinnock, and Zindika. I shall suggest that their theatre work, and experience of working in the theatre, produce a dynamic and interdependent model of the relation between redistribution and recognition that ultimately suggests the need for recognition as the continuing primary concern of Black and Asian communities in Britain. This is evident in the plays' contents, the theatrical forms employed by Black and Asian women playwrights (often naturalistic and issue-based), and the funding and theatre policies with which they engage. These, as I shall argue, produce tensions between the collective identities which they hail, for instance, through the appellation ‘Black playwright’, and the individual identities the playwrights seek to assert, requiring negotiations between the empowering as well as constraining demands of collective identities and the post-‘cultural diversity’ aspirations of long-term theatre politics.     

Multiculturalism and trust in Japan: educational policies and schooling practices

Abstract

Japan's foreign population is growing, and policy-makers need to address the manifold challenges of an emerging multicultural society. Most importantly, this concerns the task to prevent societal frictions from occurring. This article puts Japan's preparedness to face the challenge of trust-building between members of different ethnic groups to test. The realm of educational policies and schooling practices will stand at the center of interest. It will be argued that the Japanese approach of an integration policy, with its strong focus on the concept of multiculturalism on a national level of policy-making, falls short of creating opportunities for trust-learning among the members of the societal majority and various minority groups. On a subnational level, however, e.g. in Kanagawa Prefecture, some best-practice examples of trust-learning across ethnic boundaries can nevertheless be identified, and may serve as starting points for future policy reforms.     

The mourning process and “living with the dead”: Two case reports and a review of the literature

The discovery of mummified bodies in domestic settings is not unusual in the medico‐legal context. It is often a marker of social isolation, even in our urban modern society, and usually occurs among elderly people living alone or in precarious conditions. However, bereaved subjects can sometimes be found managing their grief by deliberately keeping the corpses of their loved ones at home. Investigation of these atypical cases can be challenging and often requires a multidisciplinary effort by different forensic specialists. We report two cases of people who lived for several months with the mummified remains of a relative. In both cases, the judge ordered a forensic psychiatry assessment of the survivors’ competency and the reasons for this peculiar behavior, which is regarded as abnormal in our society. Case 1 describes a shared psychosis, which developed out of a condition of extreme seclusion of the entire family. Case 2 shows that even a mild personality disorder on which a series of traumatic events operates can trigger psychotic decompensation, causing extreme denial of the reality of death. The analysis of these cases contributes to our knowledge of the scantly studied phenomenon of “Living with the Dead” and raises questions about the psychopathology behind it. It is useful to identify subjects who are more prone to developing this “deviant” behavior, in order to distinguish people with mental illness from those who merely want to profit from the death of a loved one.