Targeting the Motivated? Ethnicity and the Pre‐emptive Use of Government Repression

Research on government repression often focuses on the comparison between states over time and provides little insight about the targets of repression within a state. This article unpacks government repression against different ethnic groups. It argues that non‐democratic governments use pre‐emptive and targeted repression against ethnic groups that are discriminated, strong, or have a history of protest or rebellion in order to prevent future ethnic rebellions. For democratic governments, on the other hand, the cost of pre‐emptive repression is too high. The article tests this argument in a quantitative analysis of government‐group dyads. It finds at least partial support for some implications of the argument: Autocratic governments use more repression than democracies against discriminated groups, but only when they are also weak, and against groups with a history of protest. There is little evidence that regimes of either type respond to previous violent mobilization or group strength with repression.     

When Art Does not Represent Life: Nogami Yaeko and the Marriage Question

Nogami Yaeko's (1885–1985) early works “Meian” (1906) and Machiko (1930) critique marriage customs by portraying New Women who challenge the status quo. Yet Nogami is not directly connected with marriage debates or the New Women. To explain this paradox, this article examines these two works, comparing their New Woman heroines with Nogami herself. I argue that it was precisely because Nogami's art did not represent her life that she was able to express her opinions on marriage without attracting the notoriety and unfavorable publicity experienced by those who lived and wrote as New Women.     

The EROI of agriculture and its use by the Via Campesina

Via Campesina supports peasant and small farmer agriculture both in the South and in the North. Its basic doctrine is that of ‘food sovereignty’. It is a movement that defends an ‘ecological neo-Narodnism’. Among the analytical tools used by this international peasant movement is the comparison between the energy efficiency of traditional small farm agriculture and modern industrial agriculture. This article briefly recalls the history of agricultural energetics, and then looks at the use of the concept of EROI (energy return on energy input) by Via Campesina when it claims that ‘industrial agriculture is no longer a producer of energy but a consumer of energy’, and that ‘peasant agriculture cools down the Earth’. The absence in Marxism of a tradition of analysis of energy flows is also reviewed here, since it is of interest in order to bring together the classic economic concept of decreasing returns with the more recent notion of a declining EROI. The article also draws on work analysing how environmental activists use concepts from ecological economics, while at the same time ‘activist knowledge’ contributes to ecological economics in a two-way communication between activism and science.     

The agrarian question,past and present

Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, by Terence J. Byres. London: Macmillan Press, 1996. Pp.xxiv + 490. £60 (hardback). ISBN 0 333 66657 7

In his Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, T.J. Byres has as his concern an examination of the contemporary relevance of critical issues surrounding the development of agriculture in capitalist societies, as these unfolded in the past. Part of that relates to the agrarian roots of capitalist industrialisation. The historical experience, in this regard, of England, Prussia, the United States, France and Japan, is his chosen terrain, and in the present volume the manner of resolution of the agrarian question in two of these, Prussia ('capitalism from above') and the United States ('capitalism from below'), is addressed. In a rich, thoroughly researched and carefully argued examination of ‘agrarian transition’ in these cases ‐ in which he stresses that in the United States there were two distinct instances of transition, one in the South and the other in the North and West — he offers a nuanced assessment, in considerable historical depth, and develops new and important explanations of agrarian change, and its implications, in the two countries. Some of his major conclusions are discussed, and issue is taken with Henry Bernstein's argument/critique, developed with respect to Byres s conclusions, that the breakdown of boundaries which has occurred in the era of globalisation may signal the ‘end of the agrarian question’ in the sense of the elimination of any prospects of agrarian transition as a route to comprehensive industrialisation in contemporary poor countries.     

Gender and Modernity in Post‐War British Cinema; a case study of Young Wives’ Tale (1951)

This article explores the interrelationship between gender and modernity within the context of post‐war Britain, focusing upon the representation of women in the popular film genre of the ‘marriage comedy’. It uses a case study of the 1951 film Young Wives’ Tale to explore post‐war ideas about the ‘companionate marriage’ and the emergence of a ‘modern’ British society. Critical examination of female performance style and the gendered negotiation of domestic space within the film suggests the ways in which anxieties about the ‘new’ and the ‘modern’ are displaced onto the female protagonists. The article explores the ways in which ‘tradition’ is usurped in the film and concludes that it was a box office failure because it was out of step with the cultural consciousness of post‐war cinema audiences. The film’s lack of success demonstrates the extent and manner to which gender relations could be challenged in the early 1950s.     

Accommodating ‘Mrs. Three‐in‐One’: homemaking,home entertaining and domestic advice literature in post‐war Britain

This article analyses the effects of the ‘servant problem’, meaning the contraction of the domestic service industry in the twentieth century, as represented in domestic advice literature (etiquette, homemaking and home decoration books). Before World War II, domestic advisors assumed that readers employed staff, while by the 1970s no such assumption could be made. Managing a home unassisted, especially when entertaining guests in the role American etiquette expert Emily Post termed ‘Mrs. Three‐in‐One’ (hostess, cook and waitress at once), formed an enduring topic for British and North American domestic advice writers between 1920 and 1970. Rather than reapportioning parts of the homemaker’s labour to other family members, the solutions offered by domestic advisors revolved around reshaping domestic space and its uses in order to facilitate the simultaneous performance of multiple tasks. Multipurpose objects were promoted to act as ‘bridges’ between distinct domestic regions, while multifunctional spaces and open‐plan interiors collapsed distinctions between such regions. Thus changes in the roles of women within society and the family are shown in this analysis of domestic advice literature to affect the design and layout of the home, and domestic advice books are seen to have promoted ultimately conservative solutions.     

Rethinking Representation from a Communal Perspective

Most foundational theories of congressional representation were developed during an era of less polarized and less partisan politics. These theories viewed the incumbency advantage as buttressed by the fact that some constituents were willing to support legislators from the opposite party because of their “home styles.” But in an era of policy immoderation in Congress, this perspective leads to an assumption that citizens evaluate their members of Congress based on what those legislators do for them individually, rather than what they do for their districts more broadly. In this paper, we ask whether citizens take the interests of their fellow constituents into account when evaluating their members of Congress. Using both survey data and an experiment, we uncover support for the notion that citizens take a more communal view of representation as at least part of their evaluations of their representatives. This suggests individuals may have a more nuanced understanding of representation than purely self-interested approaches tend to assume.     

Testing an International Measure of Public Service Motivation: Is There Really a Bright or Dark Side?

‘Public service motivation’ (PSM) is usually reported as a bright force although recent debate alludes to a dark side. Variables representing each side are, respectively, job satisfaction and burnout. This study tests for both the bright and potential dark direct effects of PSM and responds to calls to further validate the international PSM instrument developed by Kim et al. ( 2013 ). Using a sample of 455 local council workers in Australia, analysis confirmed that while the measure was robust and generalizable in its structure, none of the dimensions of PSM were found to influence either job satisfaction or burnout. Plausible explanations include contextual factors, nomological concerns with the measurement instrument, and the notion that PSM has a non‐significant influence on either. The implications of these findings are discussed and future research proposed.     

Public opinion polarisation and protest behaviour

Does an increasing divide in normative notions within a population influence citizens’ political protest behaviour? This article explores whether public opinion polarisation stimulates individuals to attend lawful demonstrations. In line with relative deprivation theory, it is argued that in an environment of polarisation, individuals’ normative notions are threatened, increasing the probability that they will actively participate in the political decision‐making process. Using the European Social Survey from the period 2002–2014 and focusing on subnational regions, multilevel analyses are conducted. Thereby a new index to measure public opinion polarisation is introduced. Depending on the issue, empirical results confirm the effect of polarisation. While average citizens are not motivated to demonstrate over the issue of whether people from other countries are a cultural threat, they are motivated by the issues of reducing inequality and of homosexuality. The article goes on to examine in a second step whether ideological extremism makes individuals more susceptible to environmental opinion polarisation. Findings show that members of the far left are more likely to protest when their social environment is divided over the issue of income inequality. In contrast, members of the far right are motivated by rising polarisation regarding homosexuality. In sum, citizens become mobilised as their beliefs and values are threatened by public opinion polarisation.