“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.     

Organized interests and the state: A disintegrating relationship? Evidence from Denmark

Abstract. It has proven difficult to determine the direction in which corporatism is moving. This discussion is marred by two shortcomings: A bias towards the macro–level and the lack of a clear distinction between the stages of the policy process. Trying to remedy these shortcomings, this paper follows the development of corporatism over the twenty years since 1980 and uses this material to illuminate the causes of the development of corporatism. The analysis consists of a comparative study of seven Danish policy areas. By focusing on the meso–level within one country we gain the methodological advantage of being able to hold constant a number of variables at the macro–level which are difficult to control for in cross–national analyses. We are thus in a position to illuminate the explanatory value of a number of commonly advanced explanations of corporatism: partisan influences; state traditions; and policy specific factors. These explanations are all found wanting. The paper concludes by suggesting an alternative explanation more consistent with the Danish data, namely that corporatism be studied from a perspective placing politicians and agency at center stage.     

Justifying Party Identification: A Case of Identifying with the “Lesser of Two Evils”

Despite the centrality of party identification to our understanding of political behavior, there remains remarkable disagreement regarding its nature and measurement. Most scholars agree that party identities are quite stable relative to attitudes. But do partisans defend their identities, or does this stability result from Bayesian learning? I hypothesize that partisans defend their identities by generating ??lesser of two evils?? justifications. In other words, partisan identity justification occurs in multidimensional attitude space. This also helps to explain the weak relationship between attitudes toward the two parties observed by proponents of multidimensional partisanship. I test this hypothesis in an experiment designed to evoke inconsistency between one??s party identity and political attitudes. To establish generalizability, I then replicate these results through aggregate level analysis of data from the ANES.     

Religion and Politics in Western and Islamic Political Thought: A Clash of Epistemologies?

Early Christianity viewed religion and politics as largely separate; early Islam viewed them as largely concurrent. But from the eighth to the eleventh centuries each modified their original position, so that they almost converged. However, they subsequently diverged again. This was because, in the West, political thought became secularised following the eleventh-century papal reform movement and then the Protestant Reformation. Muslim thinkers, on the other hand, beginning with al-Mawardi (974–1058), sought to restore the subsumption of politics into religion, notably during the sixteenth-century Shi'ite revolution in Iran. While today the West views religion and politics as largely separate categories, Muslims see them as necessarily intertwined; attempts to separate them have so far largely failed. Hence Muslim political thought is based primarily on revelation (interpreted in various ways), while Western political thought is based on philosophy.     

Rural and Regional Policy: A Case of Punctuated Incrementalism?

The rural policy environment has many of the conditions that might suggest a tendency towards punctuated equilibrium. The Commonwealth has little direct power over rural space and industries, there has been a long tradition of state support for agriculture and decision‐making has generally been kept within a tight policy community, dominated by rural interests. In our review of the PAP data and policy history, we find instead an underlying movement across time and governments towards an expectation of self‐reliance for rural businesses and communities. On top of the long‐term incremental movement towards this expectation, issue attention has shifted according to political, climatological and market conditions, rather than necessarily in line with changes in policy content.     

Under Construction: ESDP and the ‘Fight Against Organized Crime’

Abstract

This essay discusses the phenomenon of ‘organized crime’ as a matter for EU foreign and security policy. Primarily aimed at searching for conceptual guidance, it draws on literature on criminology and policing, presenting two different theoretical perspectives for analyzing the phenomenon of ‘organized-crime fighting’, a utilitarian and a critical one. Against this backdrop, the essay discusses how ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) has developed and engaged the issue of organized crime. Specifically, it outlines the character of ESDP as a mechanism for ‘civilian crisis management’ and illustrates its ‘working’ through the case of the EU's police mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM) by placing it in the two different theoretical frames. Deciding in favour of a social constructivist approach, the essay concludes by suggesting that a successful strategy must focus on the dissemination of the EU's understanding of ‘organized crime’ abroad.     

‘A Pleasingly Blank Canvas’: Urban Regeneration in Northern Ireland and the Case of Titanic Quarter

The ongoing development of Titanic Quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has already made significant changes to the area. The site on which the Titanic was built has been redeveloped as an area for tourism, business, education and the creative industries. The site has been developed following a significant inflow of private capital, and with the additional support of local government and public finance. This article outlines how economic and political forces have coalesced in Belfast to the point that the violent period of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland can be said to have created a ‘pleasingly blank canvas for regeneration’.     

YouTube: A Political Advertising Tool? A Case Study of the Use of YouTube in the Campaign for the European Parliament Elections 2009

Political campaigns are made to attract the attention from citizens. The beginning of its adaption is linked to the appearance of the social media and user-generated content. Since the number of users of social network sites in Europe constantly grows, 2009 was the first time that these websites were used in political marketing purposes for the European Parliament elections. This is an exploratory study of the nature and extent of video-based social media, studied through the content analysis of YouTube videos created for the electoral campaign for the 2009 European Parliament . ( 2009 ). European elections . Retrieved from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2009/default.htm?language=en  [Google Scholar] European Parliament elections by 13 political parties from four EU states. Results have shown the specificities of political advertising on the YouTube, a raising interest in social media among citizens in Europe, and the development of this way of campaigning.     

Constructing identities of “difference” and “resistance”: the politics of being Muslim and British

A number of existing academic researches exploring experiences and attitudes amongst the UK's Muslim population have highlighted the varied forms of discrimination encountered as a ‘‘fact of life’’ of minorities in contemporary Britain. The combination of prejudice, discrimination and exclusion appears to have heightened emphatic self-definitions of religious identity, often ruling out any proximity to being British. An ‘‘identity of difference’’ through asserted religio-cultural distinctiveness is usually interpreted as a response to compound racism; the combined effects of colour and cultural racism. Further, whilst colour racism is generally declining, there is an empirical reality of pervading anti-Asian cultural attitudes resulting in an increasing ‘‘identity of unbelongingness’’. The assertion of ‘‘Muslimness’’ in opposition to a discriminatory hegemonic British identity provides a universal ‘‘belongingness’’ which further undermines the national identity. This paper will explore the construction of identities of difference and resistance amongst British Yemeni Muslims based on findings from research recently undertaken.     

“The Good,the Bad and the Ugly” Reconsidered: A Comparison of German,Canadian and Spanish Labour Migration Policies

This article compares three immigration countries that are perceived, both publicly and politically, as being fundamentally different: Canada, which is allegedly one of the most attractive destination countries for labour migrants worldwide; Germany, which is still thought to be sceptical towards immigration; and finally Spain, which is considered institutionally incapable of implementing efficient labour migration policies. Against the backdrop of various political reforms that have been adopted in these countries, however, the article argues that such a distinction is becoming increasingly inaccurate. This observation is backed empirically by analysing the technique of screening labour migrants and the temporal design of labour migration policy.     

Representation and Local People’s Congresses in China: A Case Study of the Yangzhou Municipal People’s Congress

Local people’s congresses have become increasingly active, carrying out legislative activities and (supposedly) supervising state organizations. Based on the analysis of bills submitted to Yangzhou Municipal People’s Congresses, we find that congress delegates have increasingly represented the interests and demands of the geographic areas from which they are elected, and that the local people’s congress has become a place to present and coordinate various competing interests, which are often contradictory to the interests of the local Party committee that represents the higher authority of the state. In other words, the local people’s congress has become a place where two interests intersect: the “central” interests represented by the local Party committee and the “local” interests represented by the local people’s congress delegates.     

‘Rehabilitating Charity’ in China: The Case of Project Hope and the Rise of Non-Profit Organizations

Beginning in the 1990s, the People's Republic of China has experienced explosive growth in the number of non-governmental organizations. This article examines one of the earliest and most influential Chinese NGOs, Project Hope, a charitable organization which solicits donations to help poor rural children stay in school. The success of Project Hope and the subsequent growth of the non-profit sector are surprising given that China arguably has no history of an organizational form like the Western donative-style charity. As such, this case offers a rare opportunity to examine the rise of a new organizational form. New institutionalist and social capital theoretical approaches will be used to analyse the social mechanisms underlying practice of donative-style charity. Chinese cultural practices of giving to the needy in the premodern era and under Mao Zedong's socialist state (1949–1978) will be explicated to reveal the resources and constraints emerging Chinese charities faced in the post-socialist era. This article focuses on one problem that China's first Western-style charities had to address: how to establish the practice of voluntary giving to non-governmental organizations. It examines two of Project Hope's strategies and their consequences: (1) blurring the distinction between charitable organizations and the state and (2) building personal relationships between donors and recipients.