Making sense of communitarianism: the Bolivian experience

In Bolivia, the state and society is undergoing radical transformations. The indigenous movements have revitalised traditions such as communitarianism, and ‘communitarian development’ has come to the forefront of Bolivian politics. The aim of this article is to identify what communitarian development means in the Bolivian context; how it is conceived and how it is practiced. I examine how communitarian development is conceptualised in the Aymara indigenous movement and in policy documents, and analyse what communitarianism might mean to people who uphold such values. I identify and discuss five different but intertwined significations; communitarian economy, communitarian work, communitarian management, communitarian law and communitarian values. I show that Bolivian communitarianism contains conceptualisations of cultural phenomena, which emerge at the nexus of experiences and expectations for the future, and argue that, despite tensions and pitfalls, communitarian development has the potential to increase indigenous wellbeing and agency and to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of what communitarianism is, or could be.     

Opting Out of Political Discussions

Methodological limitations have hindered our ability to understand the conditions that make individuals seek or avoid political discussions. We introduce a methodological approach to assess communication preferences in contexts where these choices are difficult to measure. We conduct three experiments to examine how the characteristics of the people in a discussion, as well as its topic, influence an individual’s “price” to participate. Participants indicated how much they would need to be compensated to participate in a short discussion about a randomly assigned topic (political or nonpolitical) under different group compositions (co-partisans, out-partisans, or a mixed group). We find that individuals demanded significantly more compensation to engage in a discussion with out-partisans than with co-partisans, for both political and non-political topics.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">BodiMojo</Emphasis>: Efficacy of a Mobile-Based Intervention in Improving Body Image and Self-Compassion among Adolescents

Mobile interventions promoting positive body image are lacking. This study presents a randomized controlled evaluation of BodiMojo, a mobile application (app) intervention grounded in self-compassion to promote positive body image. A sample of 274 adolescents, mean (SD) age?=?18.36 (1.34) years, 74% female, were allocated to a control group or used BodiMojo for 6 weeks. Appearance esteem, body image flexibility, appearance comparison, mood, and self-compassion were assessed at baseline, 6, and 12 weeks. Significant time by group interactions emerged for appearance esteem and self-compassion, with appearance esteem and self-compassion increasing in the intervention relative to the control group. These findings provide preliminary support for BodiMojo, a cost-effective mobile app for positive body image.     

Internecine strife in trade union organisations: status,competition and the effect of industry rationalisation and neo-liberalism

Internal conflict in trade unions has been the subject of considerable academic interest. Often described as intra-union tensions, the basic divergence in priorities and concerns between union officialdom and their members on the shop floor has inspired a multiplicity of pioneering workplace studies and theoretical frameworks. However, while these hierarchical divisions in trade union organisations have received concerted attention, another manifestation of intra-union discord remains relatively under-explored. Inter-sectional or ‘horizontal’ conflict can be described as two sets of workers from different trade groups within the same union which are embroiled in competition or rivalry, usually in the same workplace. Although the loosely associated concept of sectionalism was identified as a re-emerging trend in British trade unionism in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little attempt to document how conflict can occur between two sections of workers working side-by-side. This article will present a case of horizontal conflict from the British dock industry and consider under what circumstances and pressures the phenomenon is likely to occur. The two sections featured historically had an uneasy relationship and rationalisation of the industry, allied with the neoliberal restructuring of the British economy in the 1980s, exacerbated this. In these contexts, workers began to exhibit greater levels of group self-interest which amplified inter-sectional tensions further.     

Contested landscapes: the global political economy of climate-smart agriculture

Analysing key initiatives in the area of climate-smart agriculture and the politics which surround them, this paper identifies the dominant discourses shaping the debate through a discussion of discursive sites of power and by mapping the emerging ‘regime complex’ of institutional power that operates at the interface of the climate and agrifood system. This is connected to forms of material power that derive from control over production, finance and technology in the neoliberal food regime by transnational capital. Such an analysis has important implications for which solutions are promoted as part of climate-smart agriculture and which actors are likely to benefit from the flows of technology, finance and institutional support that are mobilised in the struggle to define a viable global agrifood system in a warming world.     

Civil society: Bringing the family back in

This article explores the complex and contradictory positioning of the family within civil society literature. In some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society. In others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. And while feminist critiques have tried to bring women back into view, they too tend to marginalize the family. In addition, the normative nature of these oppositions has meant that while civil society tends to be seen as the property of the political ‘left’, the family is often associated with the political ‘right’. The article argues that we need to move beyond oppositional definitions of civil society and assumptions about the family if we are to understand the multiple ways in which the family is implicated as not only the ‘reproducer’ of particular resources and dispositions but as a principal source and focus of civil society engagement and activism.     

Coalition from the Inside Out: Women of Color Feminism and Politico-Ethical Coalition Politics

This article turns to 1980s US women of color feminism to develop a notion of politico-ethical coalition politics as an alternative to contemporary articulations of activist coalition politics that obscure the high-stakes politics of coalescing across hostile race, class, gender, sex, and sexuality divides. Rethinking political joining outside of notions of ontological spectacle and ethical community, women of color feminists such as Bernice Reagon, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa encourage a uniquely political conception of coalition that resists appeals to political indeterminacy while still anticipating the power struggles and danger inherent to working in coalition. This understanding of coalition, I argue, is best thought of as politico-ethical insofar as the political commitment to undermining interlocking oppressive forces grounding such efforts is overtly self-reflexive, thereby encouraging an ethical sensibility characterized by love, existential transformation, and a reconceptualization of identity and consciousness in coalitional terms.     

Examining the Evolution of the Field of Public Administration through a Bibliometric Analysis of Public Administration Review

In 2015, Public Administration Review celebrated its 75th year of publication. For this milestone, the PAR Editorial Board selected the 75 most influential articles in the history of the journal and invited scholars to “revisit a selection of these articles” in order “to take stock of what these articles meant for the field.” Bibliometrics offers a complementary view of the history of a discipline and the evolution of its research and practice agendas through an analysis of its published literature. This article examines the changes over time in PAR from 1940 through 2013 in authorship: contributions, impact, gender composition, institutional and national affiliation, profession as scholar or practitioner, collaboration networks, and the status of the 75 influential articles. Through an extensive quantitative analysis of scholarly production, this article demonstrates PAR’s centrality to the discipline of public administration and its bridging role between public administration and political science.     

Management of Australian Water Utilities: The Significance of Transactional and Transformational Leadership

What organisational factor has the most significant impact on the management of water utilities? This article seeks the views of middle managers in several water utilities across four Australian states to address this question. It also examines their views of leadership in their organisation. It draws upon Bass's full‐range leadership theory to examine their views on three models of leadership: transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and a combination of both transactional and transformational leadership. The respondents identify leadership as the most critical enabling factor for the effective management of water utilities. They believe that effective leadership requires a mix of transactional and transformational leadership skills. They state that their supervisor's leadership skills are below their expectation of an effective leader. These leadership issues are discussed in the article.     

Environmental advocacy: insights from East Asia

Environmental advocacy in East Asia takes place in a context where there are few well-funded professional advocacy organizations, no viable green parties, and governments that are highly pro-business. In this advocacy-hostile environment, what strategies are environmental organizations using to promote better environmental outcomes? Using an original database of environmental organizations and interviews with activists and officials throughout the region, this paper investigates which strategies are most common, and compares them to the advocacy strategies found in the United States. It finds, perhaps surprisingly, that (a) environmental organizations across East Asia employ similar advocacy strategies, even though they are operating in very different political conditions, and (b) the strategies most favoured in East Asia are also the strategies most often utilized in the United States. It then argues that new theories of advocacy should be developed to pay closer attention to certain actors (academics and artists), and particular processes (organizational networking, government collaboration, and culture-making), that appear to play important roles in advocacy in countries around the world, irrespective of political context.