Rethinking the “good life”: the consumer as citizen

Joschka Fischer, Der Umbau der Industrie Gesellschaft (Rebuilding Industrial Society) (Frankfurt: Eichbom Verlag, 1989).

German Social Democratic Party, Grtindsatzprogramm der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Bonn, 1990).

Jurgen Hoffman, et al., Denn scttliesslicli produzieren wir Chemie: Die Externalisierung sozialen Kosten am Beispiel der chiorierten Kohlenwasserstoffe (Ultimately, We're Producing Chemicals: Externalization of Social Costs in the Chlorinated Carbon‐Dioxide Industry) (Hamburg: Hans Boeckler Stiftung, 1990).

Joachim Hirsch, KapitaSismus ohee Alternative? (Capitalism Without An Alternative?) (Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 1990).

Geronimo, Feuer end Flamme: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der Autonomen (Fire and Flame: On the History and Presence of the Autonomen) (Berlin: Edition ID‐Archiv, 1990).     

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

The eurozone crisis suggests a significant reinforcement of executive dominance in EU policy-making. Opaque emergency decisions taken at European summits as well as treaties established outside of the EU legal framework facilitate the side-lining of democratically elected chambers. This development entails the risk of a new wave of de-parliamentarisation in EU policy-making. An effective scrutiny of crisis management by national parliaments is, however, indispensable for taking national ownership of the reforms in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper investigates national parliaments’ involvement in the development of instruments to combat the crisis. Based on a quantitative dataset of crisis-related parliamentary activities in 2010–2012, the article observes a very uneven engagement in the scrutiny of crisis management. Institutional prerogatives in EU affairs as well as macro-economic factors can partly explain the observed variation. Surprisingly, however, crisis-related parliamentary activity is not a reaction to Eurosceptic attitudes either in parliament or among the public.     

“They might read a fly speck”: musical literacy as a discursive resource in Louis Armstrong's autobiographies

Jazz has been described as a music in which the “oral” element plays a crucial role, in opposition to Western “classical” music, seen as a chiefly “written” tradition. Although such an image is frequently advocated by critics and musicians themselves, it is also true that it can generate ambivalence and negative outputs, such as the persistent myth of “primitivism” and “naivety,” often associated with jazz music. Building on Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims at analyzing how the representations of “orality” and “literacy,” that emerge in some autobiographical narratives by Louis Armstrong, are generated, and how they can work as semiotic and discursive resources. It argues that the different depictions of musicians, and the attitude displayed toward musical literacy, are sensitive to the historical, societal, and political context in which texts have been produced and published, as well as to the narrator's willingness and ability to resist or subvert dominant discourses. Moreover, the characterization of a musician (or a category of musicians) as able or unable to access musical literacy can also serve local purposes, such as expressing the narrator's stance toward narrative characters.     

The power of “small business” as pending narrative: an ideograph in UK politics 2004–2013

This paper explores utilisation of the term small business in contemporary politics in the United Kingdom. First, the policy and practice implications of the term small business are examined, through the lens of political rhetoric. Use of the term over the period from 2004 to 2013 is examined, drawing upon the DataArt Guardian NewsTraces platform as both a method of initially visualising an overall pattern of the term’s use during the 10-year period, and a medium for facilitating data collection for analysis. The research question is: how is the term “small business” used in political rhetoric in the UK, in the identification of policy problems and solutions, and the creation of pending narrative? It is determined that the term small business is an ideograph with different and often competing meanings for various interest groups, and suffers from serious imprecision despite policy efforts which strive for legitimacy. Even with spikes in use reflecting election cycles and periods of economic stress, the term’s power is in its mutable but appealing vagueness, and its enduring quality as pending narrative. This leaves open obvious questions of both policy efficacy and the sufficiency of ideographic-laced rhetoric as a substitute for meaningful policy.     

Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The “Arab Spring” as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics

The basic characteristics and historic significance of the Arab uprisings of 2010–2011 are given a multitude of interpretations, not least in light of the dramatic events that have followed. This article seeks to understand the uprisings as expressions of an unfolding crisis in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in the region within a historic-sociological approach to citizenship as a “contractual relationship.” A brief discussion of Egyptian developments is used to illustrate the approach. The mass mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s inspired by Nasserism and the “authoritarian bargaining” introduced at the time is contrasted with the demands for a new social contract that mobilized millions during the recent uprisings. The uprisings clearly represent a critical juncture in contemporary Arab history, but their long-term impact on the direction of the future political order in the Arab region remains an open question.     

National Assessment by the National Security Council Staff 1968–80: An American Experiment in a British Style of Analysis?

At a time of intense debate over the specific organizational arrangements of American national security agencies with new or refocused intelligence responsibilities, the relative proximity between intelligence producers and consumers is a key issue. Intelligence capabilities may have to be kept separate from decision-making because of organizational economies of scale and scope, but separation alone does not mean intelligence must be distant from decision-making. For example, the British style of analysis involves a much closer relationship between intelligence producers and consumers than exists in the American context. Efforts to improve the integration of intelligence into decision-making by closing the distance between them would do well to study the history and efficacy of this process as they look to create new ways of structuring the relationship between intelligence analysis and decision-making. Specifically, history demonstrates that the US National Security Council staff implemented a process in 1968 through 1980 that approximated the British style of analysis, and this may provide US policymakers with a model for bridging the gap between intelligence analysis and decision-making.     

“Meditation is Good for Nothing:” Leisure as a Democratic Practice

Does meditation bring political benefits in the sense of strengthening citizenship or democracy? Taking the Zen phrase “meditation doesn’t work—it’s good for nothing” as my point of departure, and reading Aristotle’s discussion of leisure in relation to citizenship, I argue that meditation can foster significant dimensions of democratic citizenship. This argument focuses particularly on the avowedly anti-instrumental aspect of mindfulness meditation. The connection between meditation and leisure demands a shift in our understanding of leisure, away from relaxation available to the privileged few and toward practices that are open-ended, non-instrumental, and, like democracy and citizenship, due to all. Finally, meditation offers an example of how to appropriate and inhabit excess in ways that support egalitarian citizenship. Meditation needs to be of “no benefit” in order to foster citizenship in these ways.     

Unexpected narratives in conservation: Discourses of identity and place in Šumava National Park,Czech Republic

Abstract

In ?umava National Park, dominant actors dispute appropriate conservation strategies habitually overlooking ?umava's residents and their socioeconomic concerns. Routinely disregarded, ?umava's residents invoke narratives of identity and place that undermine the conservation paradigm by constructing the local population ‘quality’ as insufficient to make conservation a success. This paper examines the circumstances in which such a discourse emerges, how it responds to the asperity of conservation in a post-socialist setting and gains credence for implausible conclusions by appealing to broadly recognised Czech and European narratives of identity and place. What emerges is a discursive fragmentation of the subject simultaneously lends the discourse credibility and frustrates the redistribution of power in the area.     

National Political Parties and European Governance: The Consequences of ‘Missing in Action’

This article first summarises the findings of a three-year research project on the Europeanisation of national party organisation, then proceeds to a critical analysis of the consequences for national as well as EU governance. The account begins with the general finding that mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties have not created new procedures to make their leaders more accountable for their actions in EU decision-making, nor expanded to any appreciable degree the number and/or influence of party personnel responsible in the area of EU matters. It then identifies three clusters of impact: a) public opinion and partisan discourse; b) the legitimacy of both MEPs and transnational party federations; and c) the dynamics of party government at the national level. The article concludes with discussion of the ‘democratic deficit’ inside parties and the merits of politicising the EU without taking into consideration the role of national parties.     

Representing teachers as criminals in the news: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Atlanta schools’ “Cheating Scandal”

On 1 April 2015, 11 Atlanta teachers accused of changing answers on their students’ standardized tests were convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 5–20 years in prison. Despite ample news coverage, few sources investigated teachers’ motivations for altering students’ responses or explored what the consequences would have been if student scores had not been changed to passing. Moreover, the fact that the teachers’ actions resulted from systemic problems associated with working within a high-stakes testing environment is glossed over and all but lost in the reporting of the “Cheating Scandal” events. The authors conduct a critical multimodal analysis of how semiotic resources were used to represent teachers in the Atlanta “Cheating Scandal” and show how the media's framing of teachers both reflects and conceals specific interests of the powerful educational reform movement and the corporations that benefit from it, such as Pearson, Inc. Data sources included four online news sources from April 2015 that covered the teachers’ sentencing, and the authors analyzed the visual and verbal transformations that occurred during the process of recontextualization. Analysis revealed the construction of a moral narrative that depicted the teachers as selfish and incompetent, reinforcing the dominant paradigm driving school reform in the USA. The authors conclude by calling for more counter-narratives that expose how dominant representations reify negative public perceptions of teachers.     

The cyclicality of government foreign-aid expenditure: voter awareness in “good” times and in “bad”

Public Choice - While it has been argued that the cyclicality of government spending likely depends on the intensities of political pressure to increase expenditure, in economic upturns and...     

“How Can We Stay Sober?” Homeless Women’s Experience in a Substance Abuse Treatment Center

This article presents findings from an exploratory, qualitative examination of an intensive outpatient treatment program for homeless women recovering from substance dependence disorders. Structured interviews of seven current program clients and three graduates of the program were conducted to ascertain how clients maintain their sobriety in addition to meeting the unique challenges of being homeless. Based on these interviews, there are four main concerns discussed: lack of communication between service providers, inconsistency in personnel during recovery, inconsistency in relapse policies, and clients feeling ill prepared to live in the “real world” after program completion.     

China’s National Space Program and the “China Dream”

ABSTRACT

The article investigates how the “China Dream,” set as a national Chinese goal through 2049, is underpinned with achievements in outer space. Deriving from the Carl von Clausewitz hypothesis on “the continuation of political objectives by other means” and referring to Xi Jinping’s official statements that link space achievements to these “other means,” the Chinese national space program (focusing on substantial technical details to elicit evidence of progress and how concrete achievements lead to economic and geopolitical advantages) is examined. This article shows that the increasing number of space assets China possesses, including space-based technologies developed either independently or in mutually beneficial partnerships, are crucial for advancing socialism in the Chinese context and in altering the current global balance of power in a more favorable way to China.