Performing blackness in the “Rainbow Nation”: Athi-Patra Ruga’s The Future White Women of Azania

This article applies Saidiya Hartman’s framework of performing blackness to South African performance artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s performance series, The Future White Women of Azania, to consider the ways in which the performances index the convoluted imbrications of colonialism, specifically Apartheid policy in South Africa, and postcolonialism, specifically the anti-Apartheid struggle(s) and the current political and economic structure of South African democracy. It argues that Ruga’s performance makes evident political and economic systems that tout black and queer liberation while perpetuating black queer death. Ruga’s work also relocates Hartman’s framework to a transnational, postcolonial context, expanding the notion of performing blackness (and the entangled processes of domination and subordination that it maps) beyond the trans-Atlantic paradigm, suggesting that performing blackness could be used to understand the correlation between broader spatial and temporal phenomena that shape blackness. Finally, situating The Future White Women of Azania as not only a performance of blackness, but of queerness as well, postulates that layering sexuality onto Hartman’s model reveals that the dynamics articulated under performing blackness are evident between oppressors and oppressed and between members of each of these groups as Hartman notes, but also between the contingent axes of subjectivity within an individual’s experience.     

The Effects of Family Contact on Community Reentry Plans Among Incarcerated Youths

Research shows protective factors that mitigate risks for juvenile delinquency can also support the community reentry of incarcerated youths and deter future offending. Family engagement, educational attainment, and secure employment are widely accepted as important protective factors to prevent problematic behavior. Studies suggest these same protective factors are crucial for incarcerated youths and should be an integral part of reentry planning to improve post-release outcomes. Nevertheless, limited research exists on the association between these factors and the value of family involvement in reentry planning for incarcerated youths. This study addresses this gap by examining how increased family contact affects the likelihood of instituting education and employment reentry plans among youths in custody. Data were obtained from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) that provides information on juvenile offenders in confinement. The SYRP is the first nationally representative cross-sectional survey to gather information directly from youths 10–20 years old in custody (N=7,073). Analyses were conducted using a sequence of regression models to test the relationship between the frequency of family contact and whether a youth had a plan for education or employment upon release. Results reflect that youths with increased family contact were one and a half times more likely to have both educational and employment reentry plans in place relative to youths with no family contact. Findings inform practice and policy to advocate for family involvement with youth in confinement, and further suggest that family plays a decisive role in preparing incarcerated youths for success upon release.     

Elite Influence? Religion and the Electoral Success of the Nazis

In Weimar Germany, the Catholic Church vehemently warned ordinary parishioners about the dangers of extremist parties. We establish that constituencies' religious composition is a key empirical predictor of Nazi vote shares—dwarfing the explanatory power of any other demographic or socioeconomic variable. Even after carefully accounting for observational differences, Catholics were far less likely to vote for the NSDAP than their Protestant counterparts. The evidence suggests that this disparity was, in large part, due to the sway of the Catholic Church and its dignitaries. At the same time, we show that attempts to immunize Catholics against the radical left failed to achieve the desired result. To explain the puzzling asymmetry in the Church's influence at the ballot box, we develop a simple theoretical framework of elite influence in electoral politics.     

Are Tax Havens Good Neighbours? FDI Spillovers and Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of tax havens on non-tax haven countries in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI). We analyze the importance of agglomeration effects by including FDI inflow levels in tax havens and capture geographic spillovers by measuring proximity to the nearest tax haven. Our analysis yields several interesting findings. First, using panel data for 142 countries, we find evidence of positive spillovers from tax havens to nearby developing countries, but not to nearby developed countries. Second, restricting our panel to developing countries, we find the positive effect of tax haven FDI on developing countries to be robust. Third, we find that geographic distance matters for financial flows: developing countries which are the closest to a nearby tax haven benefit the most in terms of FDI inflows. This result is robust to accounting for spatial interdependence of FDI.     

INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING IN GOVERNING HEALTHCARE QUALITY

Since the 1980s, regulated markets and New Public Management have been introduced in the public sector across the world. How they have affected existing governance mechanisms such as self‐regulation and state regulation has remained largely unexplored, however. This article examines the origins and consequences of institutional layering in governing healthcare quality. Dutch health care, where a market‐based system has been introduced, is used as a case study. The results show that this market‐based system did not replace but modified existing institutional arrangements. As a result, hospitals have to deal with the fragmentation of quality demands. Using the concept of institutional layering, this study shows how different arrangements interact. As a consequence, the introduction of a certain policy reform will work out differently in different countries and policy sectors. Our ‘archaeological’ study in this layering can be seen as an example of how such incremental change can be studied in detail.     

The Challenges to Cooperation Posed by the Nexus of Terrorism and Organized Crime: Comparing the Situations Between the Andean and the Sahel Regions

The recent conflict in the Sahel area is another case where the nexus of terrorism and organized crime causes challenges to the international community. Comparing the situation with that of the Andean region brings forth the challenges faced when dealing with this type of conflict: the states’ weak presence in the remote regions, the insurgents’ ability to offer income and “security” to the people, immediate threat to international investments, unresolved political/regional issues, the marriage of convenience of insurgents/terrorists and organized crime, internal divisions of the insurgent groups and also ideologies surviving or suffering after the elimination of their leaders.     

The land of no taboo: agrarian politics of neglect and care in Madagascar

ABSTRACT

In considering the complex relationships between taboo, culture and landscapes, it is productive to examine not only how people bestow taboos onto places, but also how they take them away. In this contribution, I use as a case study a 35-hectare parcel of agricultural land in Madagascar, where members of an extended family are debating whether or not to continue to follow their ancestral taboos while farming. Analyzing the debate, alternative historical, cultural and political narratives of land relationships emerge, including a fraught colonial history, ongoing battles over land tenure, shifting community demographics, and intergenerational conflicts. Overall, this stretch of land illustrates that agricultural landscapes may be rendered without taboo not because they lack meaning, but because they contain an excess of overlapping – and highly contentious – meanings.