Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

Working hard on the outside: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of The Biggest Loser Australia

The Biggest Loser (TBL) is a reality television weight-loss programme that positions itself as a response to the so-called “obesity crisis”. Research on TBL has thus far focussed on audience responses and its effect on viewers’ beliefs about weight loss. This article focuses instead on how meaning is constructed in TBL. We conducted a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a key episode of TBL (the 2012 Australian season finale) to examine how the textual, visual and auditory elements combine to construct meanings beyond the ostensible health messages. Although the overt message is that all contestants have worked hard, turned their lives around and been “successful”, examination of editing choices, lighting and colour, clothing and time spent on contestants allows us to see that the programme constructs varying degrees of success between contestants and provides accounts for these differences in outcomes. In this way the programme is able to present itself as a putative celebration of all contestants while prescribing narrow limits around what constitutes success. TBL reinforces an ideology in which “success” is a direct result of “the work” of weight loss (both physical and emotional), which can apparently be read straightforwardly off the body. TBL’s “celebration” of weight loss thus reproduces and strengthens the widespread view of fat bodies as physical manifestations of individual (ir)responsibility and psychological dysfunction, and contributes to the ongoing stigmatisation of obesity.     

I tweet like a white person tbh! #whitewashed: examining the language of internalized racism and the policing of ethnic identity on Twitter

Using data extracted from Twitter, this study analyzes the English expression whitewashed as it occurs with and without a hashtag (e.g.: #whitewashed vs. whitewashed) through corpus analysis. As whitewashed has evolved to take on racial connotations to mean being too assimilated to a dominant white culture, I investigate whether the presence of a hashtag has an effect on how often this racial meaning of English whitewashed is employed. Based on collocative data, the findings suggest that the use of #whitewashed carries a meaning predominately informed by internalized racism and works to bind ethnic minorities to racial stereotypes. The study explores #whitewashed as a metacomment on human behavior, as #whitewashed serves to characterize beliefs about what actions are considered socially marked when performing an ethnic identity. In contrast to #whitewashed is the colloquial expression fobby, which characterizes an individual as being “too ethnic”; both (#)whitewashed and (#)fobby are discussed in tandem in this paper, for they create a double bind that marks the boundaries of ethnic identity. In this paper, I suggest that Twitter users mediate the demands of internalized racism by using #whitewashed to mark their tweets.     

Medicalisation,pharmaceutical promotion and the Internet: a critical multimodal discourse analysis of hair loss websites

This study conducts a critical multimodal discourse analysis of commercial hair loss websites. Specifically, I focus on eight sites which provide information about and promote the pharmaceutical hair loss treatment Propecia, a widely available medication marketed to treat male pattern baldness. I identify four salient discursive strategies through which the websites depict male hair loss and the Propecia treatment, namely (1) representing the balding man as type and outcast, (2) promoting the attractiveness and self-assurance of the hirsute man, (3) situating male hair loss in a scientific discourse and (4) encouraging consumers to self-evaluate their hair loss. By inducing insecurities in men experiencing hair loss and encouraging them to embrace pharmaceutical remedies as a viable response to male pattern balding, these discursive-semiotic strategies help to reproduce the contemporary sociocultural practice of medicalisation, the phenomenon whereby the natural processes of life are treated as medical problems. The findings of this study suggest that these promotional discourses play a role in transforming ordinary, benign ailments into illnesses, reconfiguring them as treatable disorders for commercial gain.     

The Tragic and the Political: A Parallel Reading of Kostas Papaioannou and Cornelius Castoriadis

Abstract

The fundamental difference between Castoriadis' and Papaioannou's accounts of the link between tragedy and the political is that Castoriadis insists on a political form (the democratic regime) whilst Papaioannou insists on a social actor (the masses). The starting point for this essay, then, are two thinkers: one whose main interest was a political and philosophical reflection on the social-historical and one whose main interest was a philosophical reflection on the arts. Surprisingly, however, the end situation is one where Castoriadis gives us a political explanation of the link between tragedy and the political whilst Papaioannou gives us a social explanation of the same phenomenon. How can this difference be accounted for? First, distinguishing their respective conceptualisations of the political allows us to see that where one thinker privileges restlessness and revolution, the other privileges law and regime. Second, looking at their depictions of the essential aspects of tragedy places them on opposing sides of the couple hubris-dike, in a way that leads to two radically different conceptualisations of the relation in question.     

美好社会:接续与超越小康社会的新发展目标

2020年是全面建成小康社会的收官之年。随着全面建成小康社会目标的实现,建设新的美好社会,实现由小康社会到美好社会的跨越,已然成为中国经济社会持续发展的新目标指向。小康社会与美好社会是中国经济社会发展中的两个不同但又相互连接的社会形态。从一定意义上讲,小康社会是美好社会的必要准备,美好社会是小康社会的必然趋势。美好社会的具体蓝图需要在实践中逐步展开,但基本轮廓还是清晰可见的。美好社会是富裕的社会、民主的社会、文明的社会、公正的社会、发展的社会。美好社会建设将与全面建设社会主义现代化国家统一起来,实现美好生活、美好社会、美好世界的协同发展。美好社会虽然不是完美的社会,但必定是不断发展进步的社会。“苟日新,日日新,又日新”是美好社会的常态。经由美好社会,中国社会和人类社会发展将进入一种全新的境界。     

The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power

This paper argues that photography is best grasped not as a medium of visual communication, but as a manifest performance of the power to make visible. As such, photographic practices are central to the experience and demarcation of private/public boundaries in advanced media cultures. In the private domain, photography is both a ritualized domestic activity and provides conventional and definitive representations of the domestic. These functions are ostensibly opposed to photography's role in the public realm: the same visual technology becomes, in the mass media, both the index and agent of publicness itself, with the paparazzi?especially in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death?symbolizing the violation of the private. The paper explores the ways in which photographic performance at the public/private boundary dramatizes power relations through forms of social transparency, voyeurism and memoralization. It also asks whether momentary crises in the dominant scopic regime can provide the basis for alternative ‘uncanny’ visual practices that are tenable and empowering.     

Modern slavery: A literature review using bibliometric analysis and the nexus of governance

This article reviews and analyses the empirical and theoretical literature on modern slavery, a topic that has received substantial attention in recent years. A qualitative and quantitative meta-literature review was carried out on modern slavery literature published between 1999 and 2021. A total of 280 works on the topic were analysed using citation analysis (Harzing's Publish or Perish and VOSviewer software) and content analysis. Several noteworthy aspects in the literature were identified, specifically the topics, articles, authors, journals, institutions, countries, co-authorship networks, and research streams. The research streams fall into three categories: 1) an overview and growth of modern slavery, 2) modern slavery and theories, and 3) modern slavery and country behaviour. The review and analyses led to the development of 15 research questions for future research. In addition, two views about current research on modern slavery were established: 1) the assertion that modern slavery is not exclusive to specific nations, jurisdictions, or periods, and 2) despite the numerous areas of accounting research on modern slavery, there is still a lack of studies on the topic. This study is the first to use inclusive mapping to empirically evaluate modern slavery.     

A place at the table: Policy analysis,its postpositive critics,and future of practice

Postpositivist critics have brought a new stridency to the ongoing discourse about the nature, applications, and usefulness of policy analysis. Regrettably, their critique is based on a decontextualized caricature, virtually a parody, of policy analysis training and practice. Their assertions are chilling but false, ideological rather than analytical, and detached from the inconvenient realities of policy making and management. Far from being narrowly technocratic and scientistic, policy analysis is dedicated to improving the craft of governance. It is fueled by intuition, argument, and ethical promptings; clearly engaged with the world of political action; and often identified with interests and values otherwise unrepresented at the table. Q‐methodology and other approaches to values identification and analysis can be important contributors to policy analysis practice, but postpositivists have a very long way to go if they are to be relevant to the practical challenges of democratic governance that arise in the many roles that working policy analysts perform. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Network Dynamics and Network Effectiveness: A Methodological Framework for Public Sector Networks in the Field of National Security

The network form of organisation is becoming increasingly important across many areas of public administration, but most analysts would agree that not enough is known about networks. This article is based on a detailed qualitative study of public sector networks in the field of national security in Australia. It reviews the dynamics and effectiveness of networks as organisational forms in this important field. A methodological framework involving five interdependent levels of analysis—structure, culture, policy, technology and relationships—is put forward to account for the internal dynamics of networks and the conditions that promote their effectiveness. The article concludes with recommendations for analysing networks in ways that can assist with the important task of network management.     

Explaining variations in enforcement strategy: A comparison of the Swedish health care,eldercare, and compulsory school sector

This article analyzes whether, and if so, why, national inspectorates adopt different enforcement strategies when controlling the provision of welfare services, such as health care, eldercare, and the compulsory school. The findings show that the Swedish Schools Inspectorate uses a predominantly strict strategy, while the Health and Social Care Inspectorate relies on a more situational strategy. To explain this variation in enforcement strategy, the article tests four hypotheses derived from the literature on regulatory enforcement. The findings suggest that the variation between the agencies is not primarily the result of differences in resources or the authority to issue punitive decisions, as suggested by previous research. Instead, we find support for the hypothesis that the definition of quality can explain variation in adopted strategies, and partial support for the hypothesis that differences in regulatory mission can account for a variation in the agencies' formal enforcement strategies.     

Limits to non‐state market regulation: A qualitative comparative analysis of the international sport footwear industry and the Fair Labor Association

Non‐state market regulation has become a central focus and continues to receive scholarly attention. The present paper provides an assessment of the conditions under which multinational firms join a multi‐stakeholder certification initiative. The cases of the Fair labor Association and 17 international sport footwear companies have been selected for this purpose. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the 17 cases is performed. The paper argues that the combination of sustained NGO pressure and public ownership of a firm is a necessary precondition for firms joining a multi‐stakeholder certification initiative. The theoretical and policy implications of this result are discussed.     

Macroeconomic performance,political trust and the Great Recession: A multilevel analysis of the effects of within‐country fluctuations in macroeconomic performance on political trust in 15 EU countries, 1999–2011

Recent cross‐national comparative studies have found no effect of countries’ macroeconomic performances on trust in national political institutions, once political explanations (most notably corruption) are taken into account. Although political trust is not determined by the comparison of national economic performance to other countries, it is argued in this article that it is affected by comparisons to their own past performance. In a multilevel, fixed effects analysis of Eurobarometer data (21 waves in 15 European Union Member States between 1999 and 2011) the extent to which within‐country variations in economic performance affect political trust longitudinally is tested. Three major conclusions are reached. First, within‐country, longitudinal changes in performance (growth, deficits, unemployment and inflation) affect political trust. Second, the impact of macroeconomic performance is stronger among the lower educated. Third, even in times of economic duress, budgetary deficits tend to undermine political trust.