Preventing violence through hip hop: an evolutionary perspective

ABSTRACT

For decades Hip Hop cultural practices have been disparaged for allegedly inciting and being responsible for the eruption of urban violence. This assumption, likely built upon pre-existing biases regarding the street culture and ethnic minorities where Hip Hop emerged, ignored how some of the genre’s main elements – particularly freestyle rap, breakin’ or breakdancing and graffiti tagging – initially served the purpose of providing at-risk youths with real alternatives to direct physical violence in their day-to-day lives, and continue do so today. It has also ignored broader analogies with other cross-cultural and cross-species manifestations of similar practices that have served for millennia as effective mechanisms for reducing the likelihood of potentially lethal violence. By presenting these manifestations – namely song dueling and mark making – in comparative terms with Hip Hop’s freestyle song and dance battles and tagging territorial contests, this article seeks to highlight the relevance and potential of Hip Hop for preventing violence while also suggesting a common evolutionary backdrop within the context of strategies aimed at minimizing intraspecific aggression.     

The Czech Islamophobic movement: beyond ‘populism’?

ABSTRACT

Sla?álek and Svobodová’s paper focuses on the ideology of the Czech Islamophobic movement as seen during the 2015–16 migration crisis. In their analysis of interviews with demonstrators and speeches by leaders of the movement, they discuss first how the movement imagined its enemies, and then describe its vision of positive core values. They conclude that the movement’s key ideological features are: an emphasis on social and civilizational decline (declinism); a return to an assumed naturalness in economic and gender relationships (naturalization); and the open evocation of violence and severity (brutalization). In terms of Rogers Brubacker’s distinction between xenophobic ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, and the xenophobic defence of liberal values in the West, Sla?álek and Svobodová find that the Czech case fits the allegedly western pattern better than the eastern one, which may cast doubt on the whole essentialization of distinctions between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ populisms.     

Food sovereignty and new peasantries: on re-peasantization and counter-hegemonic contestations in the Basque territory

This paper contributes to debates about the potential of re-peasantization and its contribution to food sovereignty with a case study from the global North, where such questions are relatively under-studied. I examine how Euskal Herriko Nekazarien Elkartasuna (EHNE)-Bizkaia, a Vía Campesina member organization from the Basque Country (Spain), advances food sovereignty through re-peasantization. I also analyze the motivations of new peasants engaged in agroecology, their understandings of food sovereignty, and the challenges that they face. Using a Gramscian political ecology framework, I argue that whereas re-peasantization contributes to a shift from corporatist to counter-hegemonic struggles, the political-economic and biophysical contexts structure agroecological production in ways that limit the extent to which new peasantries can become ‘agents of their own history’. I conclude that closer attention to peasants’ messy practices of making a living is needed to address questions of political agency.     

The Shifting Framing Strategies and Policy Positions of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego

This article asks why, in contrast to other historic territories with a regional language, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country, nationalist parties in the Autonomous Community of Galicia receive less electoral support. Going beyond prior explanations of this counterintuitive political outcome, which were mainly based on economic, sociological, and institutional factors, this piece of research sheds light on the strategies of political parties. It examines not only nationalist forces but statewide ones that successfully compete in Galicia. Our analysis is focused on the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) because this is the only nationalist force that has consistently achieved representation within the regional Parliament. Along with BNG's translation into party positions in both the left-right and center-periphery dimensions, the article's main contribution is its updating of the BNG's three framing strategies: the nationalism/“Spanishism” (1982–1993), the “common project” discourse (1993–2005), and the sovereigntist one (2005 onward). Shifts in public opinion regarding the territorial model and other attitudes toward self-government are also examined.     

Social Innovation and Crisis in the Third Sector in Spain. Results,Challenges and Limitations of ‘Civic Crowdfunding’

Based on the evolution and institutional transformation of the Welfare State and its relationship with the Third Sector of Social Action, the present article describes and analyzes the aspects of the financial crisis and resources that the sector is currently suffering. In regards of these structural transformations the evolution, characteristics, limitations and opportunities offered by ‘civic crowdfunding’ in Spain between the years 2011 and 2015 as an innovative social practice for the increase of the own funding between the entities of the Third Sector of Social Action and the changes that must be experienced by the sector in order to optimize and improve its self-funding ratios through this mechanism are examined. The high index of success of financing social projects (96.5%) through this tool, and the annual growth during the analyzed period shows the potential of civic crowdfuding. On the other hand, the small size of the bankable projects (95.2% less than 10,000 euros), as well as the low total amount collected (2,665,384 euros) indicates that civic crowdfunding is still an insufficient mechanism to mitigate the severe public resource cuts suffered by the entities of the Third Sector of Social Action and also to bring these entities closer to the objective of self-financing. Finally, we formulated a series of recommendations aimed at improving the self-financing ratios of the Third Sector of Social Action, including a more efficient and cooperative use of civic crowdfunding.     

Videogame analysis: a social-semiotic approach

The relevance of videogames in the contemporary cultural ecosystem and their social impact make it necessary to develop theories and analytical models to understand the expressive potential of videogame design, and how videogames work as texts, giving shape to certain values, behavioural patterns and ideological visions. To do so, it is crucial to build a bridge between game studies and contemporary semiotics. Thus, with this aim, we present in this paper an analysis model for studying videogames as texts that combines theoretical and methodological elements from social semiotics and procedural rhetorics, a specific branch of game studies. Our model is based on four levels: the narrative, ludo-narrative, system-gameplay and designer-player dimensions. As a case study, the model is applied to the videogame The Last of Us.     

Missing in action: practice,paralegality, and the nature of immigration enforcement

U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by federal officers guided by legislation and court decisions. While legislation and court opinions are important components of the immigration control apparatus, they do not adequately account for immigration control ‘on the ground.’ To explore this problem, we advance the concept of paralegality, the practices and operations that constitute a dynamic system of actions and relationships that are not simply linear applications of legislation or judicial decisions but may in fact extend or counter these texts. We illustrate the importance of paralegality by reconstructing the evolution of the §287(g) and Secure Communities programs, both of which have shape-shifted dramatically since their inception. Our account of immigration control highlights the problem practice poses for law, proposes a theoretical alternative to textual-law-centric research on immigration and law enforcement, and contributes to scholarship on everyday citizenship.