reflexivity and queer embodiment: some reflections on sexualities research in Ghana

The ‘reflexive turn’ transcended disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences. Feminist scholars in particular have taken up its core concerns, establishing a wide-ranging literature on reflexivity in feminist theory and practice. In this paper, I contribute to this scholarship by deconstructing the ‘story’ of my own research as a white, genderqueer, masculine-presenting researcher in Ghana. This deconstruction is based on thirteen months of field research exploring LGBT activism in the capital city of Accra. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes, I examine questions of queer subjectivity, embodiment and self/Other dynamics in the research encounter. Specifically, I interrogate what a reflexive concern for power relations means when researchers share moments of commonality and difference with research participants, here in relation to axes of gender, sexuality, race and class. Finally, I explore the challenge of theorising resistance in light of feminist postcolonial critiques of the politics of representation. I conclude that it is only by locating these tensions and dissonances in the foreground of our inquiries that reflexivity becomes meaningful as a way of rendering knowledge production more accountable and transparent, of practising feminist solidarity, and of excavating our own queer research journeys.     

active women and ideal refugees: dissecting gender,identity and discourse in the Sahrawi refugee camps

Since the Moroccan invasion in 1975, official reports on visits to Sahrawi refugee camps by international aid agencies and faith-based groups consistently reflect an overwhelming impression of gender equality in Sahrawi society. As a result, the space of the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and, by external association, Sahrawi society and Western Sahara as a nation-in-exile is constructed as ‘ideal’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010, p. 67). I suggest that the ‘feminist nationalism’ of the Sahrawi nation-in-exile is one that is employed strategically by internal representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (POLISARIO), the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW), and by external actors from international aid agencies and also the colonial Moroccan state. The international attention paid to the active role of certain women in Sahrawi refugee camps makes ‘Other’ Sahrawi invisible, such as children, young women, mothers, men, people of lower socio-economic statuses, (‘liberated’) slave classes and refugees who are not of Sahrawi background. According to Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (ibid.), it also creates a discourse of ‘good’, ‘ideal’ refugees who are reluctant to complain, in contrast to ‘Other refugees’. This feminisation allows the international community not to take the Sahrawi call for independence seriously and reproduces the myth of Sahrawi refugees as naturally non-violent (read feminine) and therefore ‘ideal’. The myth of non-violence accompanied by claims of Sahrawi secularity is also used to distance Western Sahara from ‘African’, ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic’, to reaffirm racialised and gendered discourses that associate Islam with terrorism and situate both in the Arab/Muslim East. These binaries make invisible the violence that Sahrawis experience as a result of the gendered constructions of both internal and external actors, and silence voices of dissent and frustration with the more than forty years of waiting to return home.     

Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election

Abstract

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.     

基于精英策略的多目标进化算法的研究

针对基于精英策略的多目标进化算法NSGAⅡ[1]解的多样性降低的缺点,提出了一个分布函数改进其精英策略.通过调节分布函数中的参数,控制精英解的选取范围,使一部分非精英解也能参与到遗传操作中,增加了解的多样性.实验结果表明,改进的多目标进化算法无论在解的多样性方面还是解的收敛性方面都有较大改观,性能明显优于NSGAⅡ.     

城市治理模式:类型与变迁分析

摘要:在城市治理的发展过程中,其治理结构、治理的重点、治理目标等都存在很大的差异.西方学者在研究中根据不同的标准,将城市划分为不同的城市治理模式.这些模式在行为主体、目标、手段等方面都各有特点,也存在着不足之处.然而这些模式很难照搬到中国的实践中.中国城市管理体制的变迁有着特殊的轨迹,从政府职能转变的角度来看可以清晰地把握从城市管制模式到城市经营模式,再到多中心治理模式的变迁历程.     

关于社会监督的几点思考

党中央提出要"充分发挥各监督主体的积极作用",其中包括要"切实加强社会监督".对此,从这种监督的主体和客体、地位和作用、对策和思路等三方面进行思考,必须准确回答三方面的问题:一是思考社会监督的主客体,解决的是谁来监督和监督谁的问题,即社会监督的主体是社会,而政党、国家(政府)则是社会监督的客体;二是思考社会监督的地位和作用,回答的是为什么监督的问题,相对于政党和国家内部的监督,社会监督是外部监督、自下而上的监督和多数人的监督,更是直接监督和积极监督,人民群众是开展监督的"依靠力量";三是在思考社会监督的对策和思路中,要推进社会主义民主政治建设,落实社会监督.     

Das Alter: adressiert, aktiviert, diskriminiert

In the last years, ageing – or rather active ageing – has become a highly popular issue. In contrast to the disputed activation in labor market policies, the activation of old age seems to be a win-win-situation that benefits everyone. However, embedded in two highly topical debates – demographic change and activation-based welfare state reform – the conditions of the popularization of active ageing remain a blank within the German discussion. This concerns the specifics of old age activation as well as the power-related implications and the normalizing and standardizing consequences of this re-negotiation of old age. It is the aim of this article to discuss these blanks theoretically, paying reference to Anglo-Saxon gerontology, to works on active society and to gender theory on sameness and difference.     

Laughter and Liability: The Politics of British and Dutch Television Satire

Contemporary politicians face immense rhetorical and communicative challenges. Performing on the intertwined stages of politics, media (including Internet) and everyday life, they need to master diverse and contrasting repertoires of talk. Political communication research, at present, has ignored the question of how politicians face and experience these challenges, and how they reflect on the new communicative field. In this article, we begin to redress this situation by analysing and comparing the motives, experiences and reflections of politicians who appeared in the British satirical TV show, Have I Got News for You, and its Dutch adaptation, Dit was het Nieuws. Based on in-depth interviews with seven Dutch and 14 English MPs, we conclude that they draw from three repertoires to legitimise and reflect on their participation: a strategic, indulgent and anti-elitist repertoire. The first repertoire is predictable in the context of current political communication research, whereas the latter two add new dimensions of pleasure and bottom-up representation to it.