Sectarianism and conflict in Syria

This article challenges the sectarian narrative of Syria’s current civil war, which relies on several false assumptions about the nature of political identity. It first questions how sectarian the uprising and civil war actually are, suggesting that the conflict is ‘semi-sectarian’, given the multiple other fault lines of contention, notably class, ideology and other non-sect, sub-state ties. It then draws on the theoretical debates between primordialists, ethno-symbolists and modernists to historicise political identity development in Syria. In doing so, it reasserts the modernist case, emphasising how political identities in Syria, both national and sectarian, have developed in a complex interrelated manner in the modern era and how the recent violent mobilisation of sectarian identity is the result of long- and short-term structural, economic, socio-cultural and political factors rather than unchanging ancient animosities. Of these, the most vital remain structural changes and elite reactions to them, with the prospect of state collapse in Syria’s future the most likely cause of a descent into further sectarian chaos.     

Embodied Care and Planet Earth: Ecofeminism,Maternalism and Postmaternalism

ABSTRACT

The article engages with Julie Stephens (2011) book, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, which argues for a ‘regendered’ feminism to counter the current postmaternal and neoliberalist focus on paid work to the detriment of relationships of care. Stephens points to ecofeminism as illustrative of a potentially new form of maternalism which could achieve this. While broadly agreeing with Stephens’s diagnosis of neoliberalism as amplifying the impoverishment of relations within natural and societal worlds, I contest her construal of ecofeminism and care ethics to maternalism. Instead, I propose a concept of embodied care that speaks to the ecofeminist imperative to support a radical restructuring of social and political institutions such that they focus on more-than-human flourishing. This is not to argue for a form of regendered maternalism, but neither does it seek to cast maternalism as something to be transcended. Rather, an approach to care that foregrounds connectivity and entangled materialisations provides an ethical resource to confront the dead hand of neoliberalism and a starting place from which to re-figure the postmaternal through a radical and liberatory focus on embodied relatedness.     

How Should We Estimate Public Opinion in The States?

We compare two approaches for estimating state-level public opinion: disaggregation by state of national surveys and a simulation approach using multilevel modeling of individual opinion and poststratification by population share. We present the first systematic assessment of the predictive accuracy of each and give practical advice about when and how each method should be used. To do so, we use an original data set of over 100 surveys on gay rights issues as well as 1988 presidential election data. Under optimal conditions, both methods work well, but multilevel modeling performs better generally. Compared to baseline opinion measures, it yields smaller errors, higher correlations, and more reliable estimates. Multilevel modeling is clearly superior when samples are smaller—indeed, one can accurately estimate state opinion using only a single large national survey. This greatly expands the scope of issues for which researchers can study subnational opinion directly or as an influence on policymaking.     

State involvement in limiting textbook choice by school districts

Who gets to decide what textbooks are used in America’s public school classrooms varies by state. States can let each school district decide, provide standards that must be followed and make available an incomplete listing of books meeting those standards, or allow schools to choose books only from a list provided by the state. I present a model that provides an explanation for state limits on textbook selection by school districts. I examine the roles played by decision making costs, effectiveness of voters, religious composition, power of teachers, and propensity of state governments to interfere with or to help districts in textbook selection policies at the state level. There has been virtually no research on this topic. My findings corroborate the extant literature that addresses interference by state governments in local affairs and extend the morality politics literature by finding a strong link between religious fundamentalism and state-level policies. I also find that state book lists are less likely (1) in more educated states, where voters are better able to select the most appropriate textbook, (2) in states with smaller school districts, where voters are more involved in the schools, and (3) in states with stronger teacher unions, giving teachers more power in textbook selection.