Undelivered: the space/time of the sacred in Bataille and Benjamin

Bataille’s work of the 1930s on the sacred has strong echoes of Walter Benjamin’s writing on space and messianic time. In bringing together Bataille’s theoretical and fictional writings, alongside key Benjamin texts, this article seeks to develop our understanding of a perversely grounded sacred.     

Durkheim and the Reflexive Condition of Modernity

Abstract

In this essay, Durkheim's work is approached from a double vantage point. One vantage point looks at Durkheim's work with a post-classical attitude that inter sects the ontological recasting of the social in the work of Castoriadis. It is in the context of social opening that will concentrate on Durkheim's work as it presents a model of reflexivity that concentrates on the historical development of the modern period. Durkheim's model of reflexivity also opens onto the other vantage point of political modernity, which is viewed as a particular constellation of the circulation of power, especially in nation-states, open forms of reflexivity, and democracy, in contrast to another political modernity that revolves around closed socially reflexive forms of totalitarianism and terrorism. Durkheim's work can be a fruitful point of departure for an analysis of political modernity because his theorisation occurs in a way that opens onto the historical development of its mode of reflexivity.     

Utility and excess: the radical sociology of Bataille and baudrillard

This paper consists of three sections. In the first in will attempt it will attempt to establish the theoretical centrality of the contrasting notions of utility and of excess in relation to their treatements within the ‘sociological mainstream’. The second section will introduce antother, radical sociological lineage extending from Nietzsche through Bataille and on to baudrillard. It will be argued that this ineage offers a more adequate approach to the analysis of the linked yet contrasting notions of utility and excess. These concepts will be approached, first, through the notion of general economy, in contrast to the theories and methods of restricted economy, particularly as it operates in the work of Bataille. The theory of Baudrillard will be situated as a treatment of the Problematic of excess in the modern age whereby utility and excess are no longer starkly and simply counterposed. Further, it will argue that Baudrillard's work reveals the importance of a radical theory of contemporary society, one which goes beyond not only restricted explanatory economies but also the notion of general economy itself. it is argued that the dominant strands of modern sociology are ocked within the methodological and theoretical structures of utility and of restricted economy and that this constitutes its fatal weakness. The specific maniestations of excess discussed are social violence, particularly sacrifice and death, transgression, ‘evil’ and the notion of ‘profitless expenditure’. The final section deals, briefly, with the theoretical and material consequences of ture'. The final section deals, briefly, with the theoretical and material consequences of the continue suppression, denial or domestication of this radical or marginal lineage.     

京沪青年女性在民国时期的自杀问题

本文将集中讨论两大问题:其一涉及到法国社会学大师埃米尔·迪尔凯姆的自杀学说。笔者认为,迪尔凯姆的自杀学说在论及性别问题时带有浓厚的男权主义偏见,他的分析偏移了他所大力提倡的社会事实研究法;其二民国时期京沪两地的青年女性自杀格局。根据笔者的分析,京沪女性的自杀问题在当时非常严重,两性自杀死亡率相近;两地不同年龄段的女性的自杀已遂和未遂事件中女青年所占的比例最高;诱因多是家庭矛盾或情感纠纷。本文意在厘清古典社会学自杀理论的局限,也在将中国近现代的自杀问题纳入到社会性别分析框架中探讨。     

Migrant protest in times of crisis: politics,ethics and the sacred from below

This paper focuses on the 300 Migrant Hunger Strikers event in Greece to explore the material conditions of possibility for migrant politics in times of crisis. It identifies three elements that played determinant roles in the articulation of the event: the politics of equality enacted by migrants, the ethics of hospitality and witnessing enacted by the Greek activists and host populations and the sacredness of the event. Critically engaging with the theories of Rancière, Derrida, Agamben and Durkheim, this paper demonstrates how these elements encountered and how their encounter helped migrants to achieve rights, albeit limited and temporary. Moving beyond the particularity of the event, this paper also highlights the event’s importance for migrant politics in times of austerity, and increased surveillance and racism against migrants. Despite its limited and temporary success, the event demonstrates how a politics of equality, ethical openness and respect for human life can form the basis of true cosmopolitan universality. The event also demonstrates how cosmopolitan universality is constructed from below by the migrants, who despite their undocumented status, engaged in an act of citizenship to demand equality.     

A Question of Authority: Religion and Cultural Conflict in the 2004 Election

In this study I adopt a view of cultural conflict that extends beyond the usual set of controversial “moral” issues like abortion and gay rights to include symbolic issues related to patriotism and group affect. Using a set of survey items asking about respondents’ preferences in child-rearing, I create a measure of individuals’ orientations toward authority that proves to be a potent predictor of attitudes on cultural issues, affect toward social groups, party identification, and vote choice. This authority effect persists even in the presence of extensive multivariate controls for demographic and religious variables. I find that both authority measures and religion measures shape political attitudes, suggesting the need for a multi-faceted approach to understanding cultural conflict.

State-led bricolage and the extension of collective governance: Hybridity in the Swiss skill formation system

This paper explores the extension of collective governance to sectors without collective governance tradition. We introduce the concept of state-led bricolage to analyze the expansion of the Swiss apprenticeship training system – in which employer associations fulfill core collective governance tasks – to economic sectors in which training had previously followed a school-based and state-oriented logic. In deindustrializing societies, these sectors are key for the survival of collectively governed training systems. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we examine the reform process that led to the creation of new intermediary organizations that enable collective governance in these sectors. In addition, we compare the organizational features of these organizations with the respective organizations in the traditional crafts and industry sectors. We find that the new organizations result from state-led bricolage. They are hybrid organizations that reflect some of the bricoleur's core policy goals and critically build on the combination of associational and state-oriented institutional logics.     

National past and populism: the re-elaboration of fascism and its impact on right-wing populism in Western Europe

Abstract

The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right-wing populist parties. Theoretically, the typology includes four types of re-elaboration: culpabilisation, victimisation, heroisation and cancellation. Results of a comparative analysis of eight West European countries based on a novel measurement method point to (1) culpabilisation and heroisation as types of re-elaboration limiting right-wing populist parties’ electoral performance, (2) cancellation as a type having an undetermined effect, and (3) victimisation as a type triggering the success of right-wing populist parties.     

Social inequalities and collective action in times of crisis: The case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

During the international financial crisis, Portugal found itself in a very difficult and vulnerable socioeconomic situation that has led to an increase in social inequalities. This article seeks to understand two things: firstly, how much the impacts of the crisis contributed to a general perception that people's social position has gone backwards, compared to their pre-crisis situations; secondly, whether it is possible to link this generalized perception that living conditions have gone downhill to an increase in and diversification of collective action practices. The authors analyse data from a 2014 survey of 1,500 residents of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, which they use to measure how far the level of collective action practices has increased and varied in accordance with a set of social inequality indicators, such as resource and educational inequalities.     

From absent to present pasts: civil society,democracy and the shifting place of memory in Brazil

This article takes Alexis de Tocqueville’s concern with the emotional life of citizens as a cue for exploring the role of collective memory within ‘the self-organizing sphere’ and asking how the invocation of memory affects progress towards democracy. The article hones in on the Brazilian experience, re-assessing Brazil’s amnesiac past as well as its much-lauded ‘turn to memory’. Against common assertions that Brazil’s ‘turn to memory’ will enhance the country’s democratic credentials, this article argues that the move from an ‘absent’ to a ‘present’ past in Brazil in fact bodes rather mixed prospects for the country’s democratic deepening.     

发展哲学社会科学的方法论——科技生产力是繁荣哲学社会科学的基础支撑

马克思的历史唯物主义，又叫做历史决定论，或生产力决定论，是人类社会发展的一般规律。科技生产力，是人们认识世界和改造世界的第一工具，是人类社会发展的最终决定力量，是发展和繁荣哲学社会科学的基础支撑。我们发展有中国特色社会主义哲学社会科学，需要深入实际调查研究，准确把握国情民力，认知社会发展阶段，兼收并蓄，提高民众科学素养，努力探索马列中国化的新阶段，最终达到促进社会生产力的发展，和与此相匹配的政治思想文化上层建筑的全面进步，促进“五位一体”和谐社会可持续建设。     

Religion,globalization and commodification in online world news slideshows: the dis/connection of images and texts

Lately, possibilities of producing and spreading news pictures have increased explosively through online media. Concurrently, religion has become increasingly salient in politics and news. Both processes are connected to globalization. This study encompasses globalization, religion and online images and aims to convey how online world news slideshows represent religion, and more particularly how linguistic and visual parts of picture paragraphs are interrelated, as well as related to representations of different religions. Methodologically multimodal analysis and discourse analysis are combined, focusing on composition of images and (dis-)connection of images and texts. Theories on globalization and possibilities and particularities of online news (pictures) and slideshows, frame the analysis. Tendencies to templates for different religions are found. Many religions appear as aesthetic commodities in images, whereas Islam in texts “sells” images of violence/destruction. Image–text relations are thus crucial both in the creation of meaning and of commodities in online news image culture. Two main image–text types are identified: “Religion in text, (potential) violence/destruction/despair in picture” (Islam) and “Spirituality/worshipping/aestheticism” (other religions). The world news slideshows have crucial roles as containers for these polarized image–text types, where they are related to and defined by each other in the genre's (cl)aim to cover the whole world.     

Functioning strategies of the research groups' leaders in the context of funding and policy instabilities☆

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts.     

Love,activism, and the possibility of radical social change in Mostar

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the meanings and possibilities of social change in Mostar, a city more often associated with the seeming impossibility of eradicating ethno-national divisions and corruption that paralyses it. It focuses on the under-researched politics of grassroots activism by drawing on Hardt’s and Negri’s work on the political potential of ‘love’ to shape and propel radical politics. Overall, the article reveals the lack of a cohesive agenda of grassroots politics in Mostar, and asks whether love (that creates and sustains political movement) can educate, patiently, to the revolution.     

Contesting belonging and social citizenship: the case of refugee housing in Armenia

Using the example of the right to housing, this article addresses the ways in which the practice of social citizenship, including popular claims and expectations and actual state provisions, has changed in post-Soviet Armenia. It examines the claims of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan to state-provided permanent housing, which they consider the key condition for becoming ‘citizens’ and ‘locals’ in Armenia, and the Armenian state's solutions to the housing issue following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It demonstrates how the Soviet-era housing policy has left its mark on current notions and practices of social citizenship in Armenia. Even though social rights in general have decreased, notions of social citizenship are still present not only in the expectations and claims of needy refugees and citizens without housing but also in the state's acknowledgement of responsibility for its citizens' welfare (though currently providing only for those in extreme need), and in the equalising effect, the state housing programme has had for the majority of refugees who participated in it.     

Arabs in the urban social landscapes of Malaysia: historical connections and belonging

The urban landscapes of Malaysia have witnessed a marked increase in the number of non-citizens with the influx of foreign workers to satisfy the needs of a rapidly expanding economy. This paper examines how notions of belonging might have changed through the subsequent interaction between citizens and non-citizens in the Klang Valley, the political and economic centre of the country. It focuses specifically on Arab migrants who find themselves in a region – the Malay world – with which they have had historical connections. Arabs, primarily from the Hadramaut in Yemen, have long formed creole communities in the region. Recent Arab migrants have arrived at a time of two noteworthy developments. First, there is a rediscovery of Arabness underway among creoles. Second, Malaysia's ethnically diverse citizenry has seen renewed and heightened challenges, based on historical arguments, to its sense of belonging. By focusing on novel migrants with historical connections, this paper relates the question of belonging to history and asks a number of questions. How are Arabs shaping the social landscape? How do the historical connections between Arabs and the Malay world matter? What are the implications of the new Arab presence for Malaysian society as a whole?     

Global equality of opportunity and self-determination in the context of immigration

David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I argue that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld.     

Citizenship rights in Malaysia: the experience of social and institutional discrimination among ethnic minorities

This article examines the experience of political, social and cultural rights for Malaysia's ethnic minorities. Using a survey method, our research finds that while Malaysia has made substantial economic progress, lack of attention to political, social and cultural rights for ethnic minorities in Malaysia has meant that ethnic minorities have become increasingly dissatisfied with their experience of citizenship. Experiences of institutional and social discrimination within Malaysia's ethnically differentiated model of citizenship are common. Such experiences can lead to low levels of confidence in Malaysia's national institutions and have the capacity to undermine the kind of political support that is necessary for good governance and national stability.     

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract

Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.¹

Overall, program participants (^‘’movers^‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescent's circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.     

On the durability and the decomposition of citizenship: the social logics of forced return migration in Cape Verde

This article explores the impact of deportation, a state practice increasingly applied by European and North American governments, on notions of sociality in transnational social fields. In particular, it concentrates on the dynamics between formal citizenship on the one hand and the moral economies of belonging and membership on the other. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Cape Verde, where deportation is producing a new social minority, this article examines the confluence of social and formal legal practices of exercising membership in transnational fields. After summarising the constitutive features of Cape Verdean transnational social formation, the trajectories and perspectives of deportees are highlighted in relation to their family networks, as well as in their encounters with the wider society and state structures. It is argued that understandings of social inclusion and perceptions of membership are embedded in moral discourses on ‘law’ and ‘justice’ as they circulate within transnational social fields. In the context of forced return migration, citizenship emerges as an arena for claiming legitimacy and integration and likewise becomes a key mode of the formulation of conditionalities for integration and social exclusion.