Citizenship Institutions in Chinese Peasant-Workers’ Everyday Life: Toward a Theory of Citizenship Practice

Because of the close relationship between the existence of Chinese peasant workers and state policies, Chinese peasant workers’ citizenship has long been a central problem in the research on this group of people. In previous research, institutional analyses didn’t empirically examine the operation of citizenship, while the empirical investigation of citizen resistance failed to examine the influence of citizenship institutions on peasant workers’ everyday practice. Data from in-depth interviews indicate that relevant citizenship institutions and their changes constitute a part of the peasant-worker labor regime in China, which means that their citizenship has contributed to the long-term existence and the increasing number of this group of workers. First, the citizenship institutions related to peasant workers include differential citizenship, partial citizenship, passive citizenship, and segmented citizenship. Second, these citizenship institutions have shaped their double identities of rural residents and urban guests, which have influenced their motivations and attitudes toward their peasant-worker lifestyle. Finally, the effects of citizenship institutions on peasant workers’ identity, motivation and attitudes are a product of the market logic, which has made them commodify their citizenship. These findings imply a theory of citizenship practice and contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of Chinese peasant workers.     

Beyond Good and Evil: The Black–White Divide in Critical Race Theory

Derrick Bell’s work challenges the dichotomy that separates legitimate legal reasoning from “mere” fiction through hybrids that play across science fiction, Platonic dialogue, and autobiography. Despite its merits, I argue that Bell’s position reifies and strengthens, rather than deconstructs, structures of tyranny; it maintains the problematic rhetorical construction of United States race relations in terms of the black–white divide, either alienating, or leaving little or no room for other racial groups constructively to revise power and identity. In contrast, bell hooks’, Mari Matsuda’s and Robert Chang’s work, though tentatively sketched, construes current race and gender relations in terms of a chiaroscuro of power, rather than a simple dichotomy.

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Barack Hussein Obama: the use of history in the creation of an ‘American’ president

ABSTRACT

From the time of his nomination as the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential candidate onwards, Barack Obama was the target of a panoply of political attacks. Conservatives, Republicans and even some Democrats played on his alterity in a way that previous non-white political hopefuls, particularly the Reverend Jesse Jackson, had not had to endure. If the intricate twists and turns of Obama's past did not make those attacks particularly surprising, the way in which he chose to deal with them was. In what stands as a deliberate pre-emptive attack, Obama used two substantive texts, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, to create and shape a historical narrative of his own past in such a way as to present himself to the US voting public as a truly American figure, worthy of the presidency. By the time he was running for high office, therefore, Obama had already used his knowledge of the discipline of history to create a usable past with which he and his supporters could denude many of those political attacks of their potency, whether they were focused on the years of his upbringing in an Islamic state, his familial ties to Kenya, his religious background or his purported links to radicalism.     

Beyond Militant Particularisms: Collaboration and Hybridization in the “Contact Zones” of Environmentalism

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to build on scholarship that historicises the commodification of water in Africa. It foregrounds this phenomenon as part of broader processes of colonial remaking of society–nature relations. An empirical analysis is developed that illustrates how the British colonists’ condescending attitudes to indigenous social-ecologies, as well as the attendant exclusionary practises relating to colonisers versus colonised body-space interactions, not only formed the moral and material justification for subjugating the “inferior other” but also provided legitimating narratives for entrenching a racially differentiated urbanism, imposing western sanitation attitudes and introducing modernist ways of capturing and domesticating water at Blantyre. These marked a watershed moment in reconfiguring water–society interactions from being quotidian activities performed by the indigenes to produce water as a use-value/basic need, to that mediated by the circulation of money, modernist public health concerns and water technologies primarily intended to serve the interests of the minority white settlers; thus setting in stone the production of Blantyre town in Malawi as an alienated and commodified waterscape.     

What does it take for a roving bandit settle down? Theory and an illustrative history of the Visigoths

A roving bandit provides exclusive (rivalrous) collective goods to members of its in-group. A stationary bandit further provides inclusive (non-rivalrous; public) collective goods to the out-group. The inclusive goods are an input to the production of the exclusive goods enjoyed by the in-group. As such, the transition from roving to stationary bandit is likely to involve the redefinition of the in-group, its collective interest, and the type of goods that it provides. To illustrate these points, I employ a case study of the roving Visigothic confederacy as it evolved during the fourth and fifth centuries towards the stationary Visigothic Kingdom. The illustration provides insights into why competition amongst roving bandits does not always (or often) lead to the emergence of a non-predatory state.     

Rivalry and superior dispatch: an?analysis of competing courts in medieval and early modern England

In most areas, economists look to competition to align incentives, but not so with courts. Many believe that competition enables plaintiff forum shopping, but Adam Smith praised rivalry among courts. This article describes the courts when the common law developed. In many areas of law, courts were monopolized and imposed decisions on unwilling participants. In other areas, however, large degrees of competition and consent were present. In many areas, local, hundred, manorial, county, ecclesiastical, law merchant, chancery, and common law courts competed for customers. When parties had a choice, courts needed to provide a forum that was ex ante value maximizing.     

Opportunism and MPs’ chances of re-election: an analysis of political transformism in the Italian parliament

Public Choice - We identify as political transformists the Italian members of parliament (MPs) who cross the aisle and vote for legislation opposed by their own political group—i.e., MPs who...     

‘Constructing a New Socialist Countryside’ and Beyond: An Analytical Framework for Studying Policy Implementation and Political Stability in Contemporary China

This article proposes a two-dimensional analytical framework to investigate the impact of local policy implementation on political system stability and legitimacy in China. It combines David Easton’s political systems theory with policy analysis and a variant of actor-centered institutionalism known as “strategic group analysis”. In the second part of the article, this framework is applied to a case study on local implementation of the official “constructing a new socialist countryside” policy in Qingyuan County, Zhejiang Province.     

Critical Election in the Wake of an Economic and Political Crisis: Realignment of Icelandic Party Voters?

A critical election is generally defined as one in which the decisive results of voting reveal a sharp alternation of pre‐existing cleavage(s) and voting patterns, and the dealignment or realignment made between parties is lasting. A critical election can be caused by various factors and in this article the authors analyse whether the global credit crunch in 2008 set things in motion in Iceland, resulting in the 2009 election as a critical election. In that election, the electoral relevance of voters’ psychological attachment to parties and of ideological distances to them weakened, whereas party competence perceptions increased in importance for vote choices. Attachment to parties and ideological distances are factors that are generally stable and change slowly over time, while party competence is influenced by which issues are of importance at the time of the election. This indicates that, in 2009, a restructuring of the determinants of the vote occurred; a pattern of changes that is typical for a critical election. Evidence is found that the importance of party sympathy increases again in the 2013 election, indicating a realignment, rather than a dealignment, occurring in the wake of the 2009 election.     

Iraq March–April 2003: Outcomes,a Division of Views - and an Abuse of Intelligence?

Three things happened in Iraq in March/April 2003 – an invasion, a military campaign and a start on the reconstruction of that country. In making the case for these the UK and US governments drew ‘with exceptional frankness’ on the reports of their intelligence agencies. In using and, it maybe, abusing such material the governments laid themselves open to charges of deception in arguing the case for war. All of this brought out serious differences of view between the United States and others. Such differences are argued by Robert Kagan in his book Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order as being fundamental and permanent, with the American view to prevail. This article sets out why the author believes that the American view is, at important points, fallacious.     

Office effects and campaign spending in a semi-open list PR system: The Belgian/Flemish federal and regional elections 1999–2010

In majoritarian systems, campaign spending is generally found to be more effective for challengers than for incumbents. This article seeks to understand how the personal campaign spending of a candidate impacts preference votes in a semi-open List PR system. We analyse the effect of office in general, postulating that the size of the effect varies with the prominence of the office. On the basis of the pooled data on six different elections in the Flemish region of Belgium, we show that personal spending has an effect on the number and the relative share of preference votes, except for ministers and (to a lesser extent) mayors of local communalities. Irrespective of the office, personal spending has no effect on the odds of actually obtaining a seat.     

Is the Median Voter a Clear-Cut Winner?: Comparing theMedian Voter Theory and Competing Theories in Explaining LocalGovernment Spending

This paper attempts to test the power of the median model againstthe respective strength of other alternate models based onredistributive, political-institutional and interest group theoriesin explaining the demand for public spending in New York statecounties during 1990, 1980 and 1970. To execute the comparison ofthe performance of median voter model with that of each of thenonmedian voter ones, various nonnested tests such as J and JAtests, N-tilde, W and encompassing tests have been employed.Results of the study show that although the median voter model hasa marginal edge over the rival models based on the alternativetheories, it may not be relied upon solely when many otherinstitutional, redistributive and interest group factors are alsorelevant for explaining public spending. The results of this studydiffer from those in Congleton and Bennett (1995). We do not findthat interest group models are substantially weaker than the medianvoter model.     

Mothering as a citizenship practice: an intersectional analysis of ‘carework’ and ‘culturework’ in non-normative mother–child identities

In this article, a comparative analysis is presented of two ethnographic case studies on mothering practices in Belgium. Interviews with, and participant observation among, both undocumented migrant mothers from the South and Belgian white adoptive mothers of black Ethiopian-born children provide an insight into the way in which mothering plays an important role in the pursuit of citizenship. In our analysis, we draw on critical theorizations of citizenship from feminist, multicultural and globalization perspectives, and of care, intimacy and the affective in order to show how mothering can be viewed as a citizenship practice that transcends boundaries of the private, public and the nation. In their ‘carework’ and ‘culturework’, both undocumented migrant and white adoptive mothers negotiate prevalent ideologies of mothering that are often exclusionary of their own and their children's sense of identity and belonging. Their mothering involves building new networks and strengthening their children's identities in culturally creative ways. We argue that although these mothering practices are embedded in a multiplicity of intersecting privileges and inequalities, within restraints imposed by the nation-state context, this carework attests to the agentic capacity of mothering and its potential to affect politics of inclusion, recognition and changing hegemonic understandings of citizenship and belonging.     

Between Devolution and Direct Rule: Implications of a Political Vacuum in Northern Ireland?

It is over a year since the collapse of the devolved administration at Stormont, which left one region of the United Kingdom without a functioning executive. Reluctance to introduce direct rule from Westminster reduced Northern Ireland to a desiccated form of governance. This article examines the nature and form of government in this political vacuum. The consequences of this system are examined in terms of the absence of legislation, mechanisms for scrutiny, and participation in intergovernmental relations. In the absence of devolution and direct rule, the potential for greater involvement of the Irish government in the affairs of Northern Ireland is also considered.     

The Sisyphus’s Rock of Prosperity and Disparity in the Global Economy: Giovanni Arrighi and Apple Inc’s Tax Avoidance Strategies from Obama to Trump

The global value chain (GVC) perspective assumes that business firms’ occupation of high value-added nodes in the global production network can promote their countries’ socio-economic development. However, I argue that society-wide benefits that may follow from firms’ profit-maximizing activities are often ephemeral. Over time the middle class can shrink, and economic inequality can increase even when firms continue to move up to higher value-added niches and garner huge profit. I illustrate this disjunction between business activities and societal development with Apple’s strategies of tax avoidance and reduction from the Obama to the Trump administration. I then draw on the theoretical framework that Giovanni Arrighi sets out in The Long Twentieth Century and ideas from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus to analyze the Apple case. As my analysis makes clear, the flawed assumption of the GVC perspective reveals its practitioners’ failure to recognize that within global capitalism, permanent and sustained societal affluence is unlikely, and what exists instead is a constant alternation between prosperity and disparity.     

Parsis and Public Space in 19th Century Bombay: a Different Formulation of ‘the Political’ in a Non-European Context

Abstract

This paper looks at the Parsi community in 19th century India and its role as an agent in the formation of public cultural space in Bombay. The Parsis provide a unique example of an indigenous community under colonial rule, who through acceptance of the values of modernity and enterprise culture, manage to negotiate a position of prominence within one of the power centres of the then dominant British empire. The notion of the public sphere thus employed, provides an interesting contrast with the Habermasian theory of the bourgeois public sphere. Furthermore, it provides a model that directly challenges the somewhat simplistic subject-object relations that are often implicit within post-colonial theory. Indeed, there is a particular kind of desire for modernity that is reflected in the active participation of Parsis in the construction of imperial public space in Bombay. This leads to a reconsideration of the fluidity of the notion of the ‘political’ within the discussion of post-colonialism.