霸权、话语建构、反极权主义:后马克思主义社会批判空间转向

处于后现代主义语境中的西方马克思主义,在20世纪60年代之后逐渐转向了一种后马克思主义的理论视域。以拉克劳和莫菲所代表的后马克思主义,运用话语、霸权等逻辑消弭马克思主义阶级主体的正当性,以此回应现实社会政治变化的趋势,从而提出了激进、多元的民主解放的蓝图。阿伦特的反极权主义理论在20世纪后期可谓独树一帜,体现出让人耳目一新的原创性和洞察力。而反对本质主义、反对极权主义也是后马克思主义的微观政治特征之一。     

数字鸿沟与国际关系知识霸权

霸权是国际关系的伴生物。农业社会霸权国家具有明显的军事强权特性,工业社会霸权国家具有明显的工业强权特性,信息社会霸权国家初步显形知识霸权的特性。数字鸿沟的浮现使得国际关系中的知识霸权凸现,成为发达国家获利、强国和称霸的利器,科学的认识和探讨知识霸权对当代国际关系的影响具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

监狱警察权力场域研究

监狱警察权力是监狱警察为实现国家意志,组织管理囚犯在实现刑罚执行目标的过程中对囚犯理念、行为的影响力和控制力。监狱警察权力场域是其主体争夺支配性资源和价值评价话语权的空间场所。当下监狱警察"改造"话语霸权在表征现代行刑理性精神的同时,也遮蔽了监狱警察权力不断扩张的问题、意识形态权的单向度问题和权力私人化的问题。监狱警察权力去蔽的空间和权力制约的空间,应当是当下监狱警察权力自主建构的主要场域。     

浅论娱乐“霸权”对未成年人权利的侵害

娱乐市场运作中,部分利益集团取得了一定范围内的娱乐"霸权"。娱乐霸权形成了单向文化趣味的隐患,冲淡了文化内涵及思想厚度,且在一定意义上直指未成年人这一庞大的消费群体,剥夺了他们的选择权利,并对未成年人成长和教育提出了新的挑战。大众文化有其存在和生长的必然性,并非代表其他文化就应销声匿迹,未成年人更加需要文化方式的多样性,需要精品文化的陶冶。因此娱乐"霸权"现象应引起关注。     

Food for Thought: Reflections on a Counter-hegemonic Food-related Intervention in a South African University

Currently the Academy operates primarily as a space that helps to create and cement neoliberal hegemony in the Gramscian sense. However, since hegemony is never complete, universities are a site of struggle and the opportunity exists to engage in a “war of position” within them. This must necessarily involve allowing space for counter-hegemonic discourses to emerge through critical reflection on “common sense” discourses, as well as the deliberate inclusion of counter-hegemonic thinking and theory from below. This article reflects on an attempt to do this in a South African university, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in relation to the issue of food. The Food Festival was an attempt to subvert interlocking hegemonic discourses, including that of food security, by “reading the world” (à la Freire) in order to understand the actual nature of existing food systems as inherently oppressive, and “inserting” the concept of food sovereignty as developed by the global peasants’ movement La Via Campesina. After considering the counter-hegemonic intentions of the Festival, the article reflects on its uneven success.     

Constructing and Conceptualizing“Interdependent Hegemony”in an Era of the Rise of the BRICS and Beyond

The paper aims to provide a framework for understanding the global impactof the rise of the “Second World” (emerging powers, such as BRICS) brought aboutby globalization and the transformation of international relations and internationalpolitical economy. The paper takes the point of departure from one of Gramsci’s keyconceptual categories and analytical apparatus, e.g. “hegemony,” to explore the extentthat the upsurge of the emerging powers has reshaped the terrain and parameters ofsocial, economic and political relations both at the national and global levels, and hasexerted pressure on the existing international order in terms of both opportunities andconstraints. The paper intends to examine the dialectical nexus between the role of theemerging powers as a counter-hegemonic, socio-economic and socio-political forcefor a new world order. The paper’s analytical approach is to combine neo-Gramscianhegemony theories with critical post-hegemony theories. The conclusion of thepaper is to suggest that in an era of globalization and transformational capitalism it isimpossible for the emerging powers to establish an alternative independent hegemony;rather, the world will witness a new era of “interdependent hegemony,” in whichboth the “First World” and the “Second World” are intertwined in a constant processof shaping and reshaping the world order in the nexus of national interest, regionalorientation, common economic and political agendas, security alliance and potentialconfl icts.     

'Adorned with the Mix of Faith and Profanity that Intoxicates the People': The Festival of the Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1930–19541

This essay looks at a formative period in the history of the festival of the Senhor do Bonfim, one of Salvador's most important religious festivals. The essay focuses on the public ritual washing of the Church of Bonfim and the tensions between the Catholic Church, who periodically banned the washing from the larger festival, and a variety of historical actors including politicians, journalists, authors and working-class Salvadorans whose efforts eventually contributed to the lifting of the prohibition once and for all in 1953. The author suggests that the defence of the washing both reflected and contributed to a larger hegemonic process taking place in Salvador after 1930, as actors within Salvador's dominant class accepted and even praised Afro-Bahian cultural practices, including them as integral parts of a larger Bahian identity.     

Notes on recent dissertations

The growing popularity and use of news Web sites around the world provides new possibilities for studying the position of the United States in the world system charted by digital news items. In this article, we look at 35 popular news sites in 10 different languages over a 2-year period, in order to assess the position of the United States in world news as well as to identify possible explanations for it. Our findings show that the United States is by far the most prominent country in the news sites that we studied from around the world, except for the French and Arabic ones. The network structure of news links clearly exhibits its key position as the centerpiece of a global system. Economic factors better explain America's news prominence than political, social, and geographical factors. Yet, none of the many variables we examined could explain the large gap between the news prominence of the United States and that of the rest of the world. We discuss possible reasons for these findings and suggest directions for further studies in the field.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: network data.]     

Party matters: the institutional origins of competitive hegemony in Tanzania

Electoral authoritarianism has emerged as a primary mode of authoritarian rule in the post-Cold War era. It is also a notably heterogeneous phenomenon, in terms of both its impact upon incumbents and the quality of contestation. This article investigates a specific type of electoral authoritarian outcome, a competitive hegemony. In competitive hegemonies regimes are able to dominate elections by large vote margins, but with comparatively much lower levels of electoral fraud and coercion. Using a case study of Tanzania and its ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), this article argues that distinct investments made under single-party rule into party institutionalization and the incorporation of subsistence-based peasants provided CCM with additional sources of elite cohesion, strong mobilization capacity, and therefore greater stability. The article shows how during multiparty elections elite defection has in fact been minimal, and voting patterns largely coincide with infrastructural investments made as part of Tanzania's socialist development programme, ujamaa. Moreover, while Tanzania's opposition parties have made important strides in recent years in terms of institutionalization, they are still precluded from competing effectively in large portions of the country where demand for new parties is low.     

The limits of feminist political intervention in Singapore

This article uncovers the strongly ideological quality in Singapore's theory and practice of pragmatism. It also points to a strongly pragmatic quality in the ideological negotiations that play out within the dynamics of hegemony. In this complex relationship, the combination of ideological and pragmatic manoeuvring over the decades has resulted in the historic political dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP) government in partnership with global capital. But in an evolving, diversifying and globalising society, this manoeuvring has also engendered a number of mismatched expectations. It has also seen a greater sensitivity and attention to the inherent ideological contradictions and socio-economic inequalities that may erode what has been a relatively stable partnership between state and capital. This article argues that Singapore's one-party dominant state is the result of continuous ideological work that deploys the rhetoric of pragmatism to link the notion of Singapore's impressive success and future prospects to its ability to attract global capital. In turn, this relies on maintaining a stable political system dominated by an experienced, meritocratic and technocratic PAP government. While this Singaporean conventional wisdom has supported the political and economic interests of the state and global capital in a period of neo-liberal globalisation, its internal contradictions and external pressures have also begun to challenge its hegemonic pre-eminence.