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.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

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.     

Common‐interest housing in the communities of tomorrow

Abstract

This article offers a broad conceptual framework for understanding the rise of common‐interest housing developments (CIDs), including gated communities, townhouse and condominium projects, and other planned communities. The article begins by describing the CID as an institution and the essential characteristics and varieties of CIDs. Second, the rapid spread of CIDs is attributed to the incentives currently operating on real estate developers, municipal governments, and consumers. Third, this institution is placed in the context of definitions of public and private, and the categories of state, market, and civil society.

The article then presents the eight different “big‐picture” interpretations of this overall phenomenon that could inform the public policy framework within which CIDs are situated. They can be seen as an imperfectly realized version of the “rational choice” or “public choice” model, and reform efforts should be aimed at making choice mechanisms more effective.     

House organ

Red green theory and practice in the world today take a wide variety of forms that eschew leftist dogmatism and “time‐honored, time‐worn” slogans, on the one hand, and “mere utopianism,” on the other. The Alternative Rouge et Verte (AREV) movement in France is one of these, as a reading of this statement of their general political views, written for CNS, will reveal. The publication of the AREV movement is: Alternative Rouge et Verte, 40 rue de Malti, 75011 Paris, France.     

Dynamics of social class contempt in contemporary British television comedy

British television comedy has often ridiculed the complexities and characteristics of social class structures and identities. In recent years, poor white socially marginalised groups, now popularly referred to as “chavs”, have become a prevalent comedy target. One of the most popular and controversial television “comedy chavs” is Little Britain's fictional teenage single mother, Vicky Pollard. This article examines the representation of Vicky Pollard in light of contemporary widespread abuse of the white working class. Highlighting the polysemic and ambivalent nature of Vicky Pollard's representation, the article argues that whilst Little Britain's characterisation of Vicky Pollard largely contributes to contemporary widespread demonisation of the working class, there are moments within Little Britain when a more sympathetic tone towards the poor working class may be read, and where chav identities are used to ridicule the pretensions, superficiality, and falsity of middle-class identities. The article concludes that television comedy has been, and continues to be, a significant vehicle through which serious concerns, anxieties, and questions about social class and class identities are discursively constructed and contested.     

Picture–text congruence in translation: images of the Zen master on book covers and in verbal texts

The study aims to demonstrate how cover pictures and verbal texts are congruent with each other in presenting the Zen master Huineng in two English translations of the Platform Sutra. The focus is on the interpersonal/interactive meanings and the analytical tools adopted are systemic functional linguistics and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual social semiotics. Results show that the visual techniques employed to depict Huineng on the book covers are in consistency with the verbal choices adopted to present Huineng in the translated texts. While the medium to close shot and eye-level angle complement the choice of speaker-plus “we” as dominant interactive subject person, and qualified statements and polite suggestions/commands in Wong’s translation, the very long shot matches the use of speaker “I” and addressee “you”, and categorical statements and direct commands in Cleary’s translation. In this way a consistent image of Huineng is presented in each translation: friendly and willing to be close to the viewer/audience in Wong’s translation, but authoritative and distant in Cleary’s translation.     

A Contingent Approach to the Organization and Management of Public–Private Partnerships: An Empirical Study of English Health Care

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become a prominent feature of contemporary public policy. Although research shows variation in the contractual configuration of partnerships, there is little evidence of how these shape service and workforce organization. Through comparative ethnographic research on two PPP health care providers in the English National Health Service, this article develops the idea that PPPs exhibit “tight” and “loose” arrangements that relate to “downstream” service and workforce management. It induces four empirically grounded mediating factors to describe this relationship. The first relates to the “dependence” between partners in terms of financing, strategy, and resource sharing; the second to the “strategic orientation” of leaders; the third to the composition of the “professional workforce”; and the fourth to the “management approach” to service and workforce organization. The article contributes to the research literature by exploring the contingencies in how PPPs are operationalized on the ground.     

Political cartoons as carnivalesque: a multimodal discourse analysis of Argentina’s Humor Registrado magazine

Political cartoons, although generally neglected by academic criticism, are often one of the only forms of socio-political critique permitted during authoritarian rule (Barajas, Rafael. 2000. “The Transformative Power of art: Mexico’s Combat Cartoonists.” NACLA Report on the Americas, 3: 6–41). This paper explores the reasons behind this, reading the genre as a form of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, a participatory space of oppositional discourse outside the official version with which it has an “ambivalent” relationship (Bakhtin, Mikhael. 1984. Rabelais and His World (Trans Iswolsky H). Bloomington: Indiana University Press) and can be allowed to circulate as a “safety valve” (Holquist, Michael. 1984. “Prologue.” In Rabelais and his World, edited by M. Bakhtin, xiii–xxiii. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) of controlled protest. Drawing on tools of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics (Kress, Gunther, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge) and Semiology (Barthes, Roland. 1968. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang) for methodological purposes, this study investigates this hypothesis through the political cartoons of the covers of satirical fortnightly publication Humor Registrado during the final year of Argentina’s last dictatorship, 1982–1983. The magazine’s role in challenging the dictatorship is explored through an analysis of its representations of key social actors and events during Argentina’s difficult period of transition from dictatorship to democracy following defeat in the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands War.     

Knights and Knaves Return: Public Service Motivation and the Delivery of Public Services

ABSTRACT

There are several models for delivering public services such as health care or education, most of which can be summarised under the headings of trust, mistrust, voice, and choice. Each contains assumptions concerning the motivation of the professionals and others who provide the service concerned: that is, the extent to which they are “knaves,” motivated primarily by self-interest, or “knights,” motivated by altruism and the desire to provide a public service. This article highlights the assumptions concerning motivation implicit in each of the delivery models, illustrating the points made by reference to the author's experience as a senior policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and to some evidence on the performance of public services under the different models.     

Charlie Hebdo’s controversial cartoons in question: stances,translational narratives and identity construction from a cross-linguistic perspective

ABSTRACT

Charlie Hebdo, a synonym for the universal cause of liberty and freedom of the Press, gained international attention after the terrorist attack of January 2015. However, Charlie Hebdo through its particular humour, which is both culture-bound and ideology-oriented, triggered anger and indignation, mainly after the publication of cartoons portraying little Aylan, the symbol of refugees’ tragedy, and in particular, the one which depicted him as “an ass groper”. This article sets out to investigate from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural viewpoint reactions that the most controversial cartoon triggered, while considering both the socio-political context of the event and examining the crisscrossing and competing narratives it gave rise to. In doing so, the study draws heavily on the narrative theory of translation [Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge, Baker, Mona. 2007. “Reframing Conflict in Translation.” Social Semiotics 17 (2): 151–169, Baker, Mona. 2010. “Narratives of Terrorism and Security: ‘Accurate’ Translations, Suspicious Frames’.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 3 (3): 347–364] and uses concepts and methods from Critical Discourse Analysis, and semiotic approaches to cartoon translation. Working with a trilingual corpus composed of articles from various French, English and Greek online newspapers and blogs, it first delineates the theoretical framework, the methodological approach applied and then it proceeds with the analysis of stancetaking as deployed in headlines and examines from a contrastive viewpoint the competing translational narratives in English and Greek data.     

Thinking Friendship With and Against Hannah Arendt

This essay interrogates Hannah Arendt’s different notions of friendship, their weaknesses and strengths, with a view to establishing the basis for a more adequate discussion. After examining her conception of friendship first among the ancients, and then in “dark times”, the essay asks how are we to understand friendship among the moderns when times are not particularly dark. This requires a critical reading of her conception of private intimacy and social association in order to construct a more plural understanding of friendship, and of the criteria by which it can be judged, as it is differentially instituted within, and traverses, the private, civil and political realms.     

Private finance for social housing in Australia

Abstract

A significant change in the finance of social housing in the 1980s was a movement to transfer responsibility for funding to the private sector. This article argues that governments must continue to be involved in social housing finance as this movement progresses. Financing initiatives undertaken in Australia are used to signal the risks associated with the provision of social housing finance, to illustrate the mechanisms employed to manage these risks, and to highlight the conflicts that arise when a mix of public and private funding is attempted.

The article proposes the introduction of “equity bonds” as an innovative way to raise funds for social housing and to overcome inefficiencies arising from the present complex and costly administrative structures. However, a commitment to ongoing subsidies to close the full rental gap is necessary for equity bonds to serve those most in need.     

Capitalism,nature, socialism a theoretical introduction∗

This article expounds the traditional Marxist theory of the contradiction between forces and relations of production, over‐production of capital and economic crisis, and the process of crisis‐induced restructuring of productive forces and production relations into more transparently social, hence potentially socialist, forms. This exposition provides a point of departure for an “ecological Marxist”; theory of the contradiction between capitalist production relations and forces and the conditions of production, under‐production of capital and economic crisis, and the process of crisis‐induced restructuring of production conditions and the social relations thereof also into more transparently social, hence potentially socialist, forms. In short, there may be not one but two paths to socialism in late capitalist society.

While the two processes of capital over‐production and underproduction are by no means mutually exclusive, they may offset or compensate for one another in ways which create the appearance of relatively stable processes of capitalist development. Study of the combination of the two processes in the contemporary world may throw light on the decline of traditional labor and socialist movements and the rise of “new social movements”; as agencies of social transformation. In similar ways that traditional Marxism illuminates the practises of traditional labor movements, it may be that “ecological Marxism”; throws light on the practices of new social movements. Although ecology and nature; the politics of the body, feminism, and the family; and urban movements and related topics are usually discussed in post‐Marxist terms, the rhetoric deployed in this article is self‐consciously Marxist and designed to appeal to Marxist theorists and fellow travelers whose work remains within a “scientific”; discourse hence those who are least likely to be convinced by post‐Marxist discussions of the problem of capital's use and abuse of nature (including human nature) in the modern world. However, the emphasis in this article on a political economic “scientific”; discourse is tactical, not strategic. In reality, more or less autonomous social relationships, often non‐capitalist or anti‐capitalist, constitute “civil society,”; which needs to be addressed on its own practical and theoretical terms. In other words, social and collective action is not meant to be construed merely as derivative of systemic forces, as the last section of the article hopefully will make clear.     

The Public Service Mutual: Theories of Motivational Advantage

Public service mutuals are a form of employee‐led organization in which service workers spin out of the public sector to form “mutuals” that contract back with government to provide a service. This article draws on economic and psychological theory to demonstrate that mutuals can align both self‐interested and altruistic or public service motivations so as to serve the social good; moreover, by offering greater autonomy to public service professionals, mutuals are predicted to encourage energetic and persistent behaviors. In both cases, there is an advantage over alternative forms of organization such as the public sector bureaucracy, the shareholder‐owned private firm, or the nonprofit organization. The employee‐led mutual form, however, may not appeal to risk‐averse workers, its collective decision‐making systems may be inefficient, and external mechanisms may be required to ensure that organizational outcomes are always directed toward the social good.     

How Japanese wallflowers turned into celebrities: self-mockery and self-revelation of the female comedy duo Harisenbon

ABSTRACT

This study examines the Japanese female comedy duo Harisenbon. By examining their approach to comedy and their reception by Japanese media and society, it discusses how they use their “ugly”, “fat” and “skinny” personas to expose Japanese social pressures upon women. It considers how both comedians present a self-image that apparently matches their stage characters, and how their interactions with mainstream media endorses the very social norms they ridicule, without directly challenging or satirising them, even if this leaves space for destabilising the assumptions on which they are based. It observes that one half of the duo, who is more successful than the other, might be due to her willingness to mock her own appearance more savagely.     

Private Placements and the Cost of Borrowing in the Municipal Debt Market

Private placements continue to be issued in the municipal debt market and remain a topic of interest for municipalities, investors, and regulators. Private placements are often sold without an underwriter to relatively sophisticated investors and are typically “buy‐to‐hold” transactions. Therefore, compared with traditional competitive or negotiated sales, there are fewer financial intermediaries and fewer regulatory disclosure requirements that accompany private placements. Savings on “flotation” costs can be substantial enough to make private placements a less costly method of debt offering. Conditional on selectivity in the method of sale and key market covariates, private placements offer lower arbitrage yields and issuance costs compared to both competitive and negotiated debt offerings.     

Conflict‐Induced Displacement,Understanding the Causes of Flight

This study investigates circumstances that affect individuals’ decisions of whether or not to flee their homes during civilian conflicts. Building on the “choice‐centered” approach to studying forced migration, I test the argument that people make a decision to flee or stay even under highly dangerous circumstances. Using primary data collected through a public opinion survey in Nepal, I test a number of hypotheses regarding the impact of factors such as violence, economic opportunity, physical infrastructure or geographical terrain, and social networks on forced migration, providing an individual‐level test of the choice‐centered approach to studying forced migration. The empirical results are consistent with the major hypotheses developed in aggregate‐level studies and provide better insights into the factors that affect individual‐level behavior. Beyond conflict, there are a number of significant economic, social, physical, and political factors that affect individuals’ choice to flee.     

THE OBSERVER

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Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent

In this article I want to outline an argument for a New Critical Theory with a cosmopolitan intent. Its main purpose is to undermine one of the most powerful beliefs of our time concerning society and politics. This belief is the notion that “modern society” and “modern politics” are to be understood as society and politics organized around the nation‐state, equating society with the national imagination of society. There are two aspects to this body of beliefs: what I call the “national perspective” (or “national gaze”) of social actors, and the “methodological nationalism” of scientific observers. The distinction between these two perspectives is important because there is no logical co‐implication between them, only an interconnected genesis and history.