The making and political life of Miners Shot Down: an interview with Rehad Desai and Anita Khanna

The interview that follows was conducted in Kensington, Johannesburg, in may 2015. I had not originally planned to publish it: I interviewed rehad desai and anita Khanna in preparation for a presentation on their documentary, Miners Shot Down (2014), I was going to give at a conference, to be repeated at the annual colloquium we organise with the school of Communication at the university of Johannesburg to mark the anniversary of the marikana massacre. I had been monitoring the marikana support Campaign quite closely, so I was interested in hearing not only about the documentary – the way it frames and narrates the story of the massacre – but also about its role in this multimedia campaign. I wanted the director and producer to share their thoughts on the impact the film had made, on the response at the local and international screenings they had attended, on what the miners of marikana and their communities thought of it, and on the campaign to have the film screened on South African national television. in the interview, they also describe the involvement of the miners and their communities in the political life of the film and their own experience of filming, producing and promoting the documentary. When Miners Shot Down won the international emmy award for best documentary in november 2015, I reread the interview and thought others might be interested in it – especially scholars working in media, film and communication studies. So here it is. Thanks go to rehad desai and anita Khanna for their time and generosity and to amy maphagela for transcribing the interview.     

Exploitation in Human Trafficking and Smuggling

This article explores the mechanisms that underpin human smuggling and trafficking. It argues for the continued analytical relevance of the distinction between “trafficking” and “smuggling”, as posited by the 2000 UN Protocols. While this distinction has come under sustained criticism from several authors over the last 15 years, it nonetheless continues to capture the essential features of two distinct phenomena (control over a human being vs. illegal entry into a country), and acknowledges the role of agency in smuggling. The paper goes on to discuss three different scenarios that may emerge as a result of the interplay between smugglers and smuggled persons, and it specifies the role of exploitation in each scenario. In addition, the paper offers empirical evidence of the key building blocks of smuggling — namely the search for reliable information and the reaching of an agreement in regard to the service offered — and of how smuggling can turn into trafficking. This work concludes by drawing out the relevant policy implications.     

Protest Diffusion and Cultural Resonance in the 2011 Protest Wave

The 2011 protest wave, encompassing the Arab Spring revolutions, the Indignados movement in Spain and Greece, and the Occupy Wall Street movement has often been described as a new global protest cycle. However, the dynamics of diffusion suggest a more complex picture. Transmission of protest frames and repertoires from one country and cultural region to another was quite slow and tortuous. Moreover, adoption of the new ideas and practices of protest spawned by the protest wave of 2011 involved laborious dynamics of cultural translation and domestication. This situation points to the continuing importance of local protest cultures and cultural contexts, in addition to channels of transmission, even in an era of instantaneous communication technologies.     

How politicians use performance information in a budgetary context: New insights from the central government level

This article looks at performance information use by legislators at the central level in a budgetary context. The multi‐method approach (interviews, quantitative and qualitative analysis of plenary speeches given during budget readings) allows us to draw a broader picture of the use of performance information. The findings provide new insights into different purposes of performance information use. We identify four general use types, that is, de‐legitimizing, legitimizing, improving and understanding, and deflecting, which together with the subjects addressed blend into different use purposes. Second, the study sheds light onto different factors affecting performance information use, that is, the attributes of users of performance information, the properties of performance, and the role of institutional support.     

Returns to Foreign Language Skills in a Developing Country: The Case of Turkey

This paper analyses the economic value of foreign languages in Turkey using data on some 6000 adult male wage-earners in 2007. We find positive earnings returns to proficiency in English and Russian, which increase with the level of competence. French and German skills are also positively rewarded, although their return seems mostly linked to the likelihood to hold specific occupations. In contrast, knowing Arabic does not generate an earnings premium. Focusing on English, we check for heterogeneous returns along the conditional earnings distribution. The results are qualitatively invariant when we account for misclassification errors in self-reported English skills.     

Economic influences on legislative elections in multiparty systems: France and Italy

For the United States, the issue of the impact of aggregate economic conditions on legislative election returns has received extensive research. For European countries, however, research is much less plentiful. In particular, multiparty systems such as France and Italy lack study. For both these nations, we find that worsening aggregate economic conditions significantly increase the legislative vote for leftist parties, which have traditionally played an opposition role. Further, these models seem strong enough to provide good prediction of the actual legislative vote share. For example, they manage to forecast the 1981 victory of the left in France, and the 1980 Communist party support in Italy.