The post-development impasse and the state in India

After discussing the various points of departure suggested by scholars of development, this paper argues that, in the context of India, one way out of the post-development impasse lies in shifting the focus from development politics to the workings of the developmental state on the ground, and to change the methodological vantage point to ethnography. It is suggested that this change in approach would provide fresh insights into the workings of the developmental state and into the process of development in India.     

Perception of the relations between former colonial powers and developing countries

People register and process stimuli every day, creating an image of space–time reality involving multifaceted relations between various states. The authors have created a database consisting of articles from the periodical Le Monde diplomatique from 1954 to 2009. This paper focuses on investigating how strong relations are between former colonial powers and developing countries. The authors present an index showing the frequency of coincidence of opinion-shaping content in articles about one of the selected world powers and a developing country; they next establish a quantitative reference to dependency and world-systems theories.     

The dark(er) side of ‘state failure’: state formation and socio-political variation

Scholars concerned with the formation of states, specifically the relationship between state formation and war, hold one of two positions. Some agree with Charles Tilly’s historiological conclusion that war is decisive for the establishment of stateness and specify key concepts, in order to explain presumed discrepancies between past and present. Others point towards the international sphere in its current form and advocate a ‘war breaks states’ perspective. This paper argues that both standpoints neglect the ‘sub-national’ level. While proponents of the ‘war breaks states’ thesis are missing para-sovereign zones of rule, supporters of the ‘war makes states’ approach take a juridical view of statehood and focus on ‘state strength’. The failed states paradigm guiding contemporary security and development policy hinders an adequate analysis of the actual situation on the ground. Discussing the shortcomings of failed states approaches and state formation theorising, the paper proposes a conceptualisation in terms of socio-political variation instead of a mere dichotomisation of order. Some conclusive questions are raised, indicating future research directions linked to the historical sociology of state formation.     

Turkey – from tutelary to delegative democracy

Guillermo O’Donnell’s influential work ‘Delegative Democracy’ set the discourse on a peculiar type of democracy. Lying between representative democracy and authoritarianism, the uniqueness of delegative democracy lies in its features, including an absence of horizontal accountability, strong centralised rule, individual leadership with unchecked powers, a cult figure embodying the nation and clientelist practices. While delegative democracies seem to arise out of presidential systems, Turkey, though a parliamentary system, has also displayed the distinctive features of delegative democracies. This paper identifies three characteristics of delegative democracy, which are responsible for the lack of democratic consolidation, if not the erosion of democracy itself: anti-institutionalism, an anti-political agenda and clientelism. Arguing that delegative democracy is the best concept with which to examine contemporary Turkey, the paper lays out how, post-2011, Turkey has demonstrated the three elements of delegative democracy. The final section discusses the implications of the Turkish case for scrutinising the very possibility of delegative democracy in parliamentary regimes.     

The Young-Girl in Theory

This essay situates Tiqqun's Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl within a long history of leftist art and theory that uses the figure of the girl to respond to, reflect on, and even to attempt to subvert the various subjective crises of late capitalism. At the same time, and reading Tiqqun against the grain, it asks whether the Young-Girl might be of any use for thinking through the new questions about subjectivity and representation that neoliberalism has presented for feminism.     

Male workers in the female-dominated long-term care sector: evidence from England

Labor market changes, including growing opportunities to work in the long-term care (LTC) sector, may attract more men to this traditionally female-dominated occupation. Analyzing an English national workforce data-set we investigate whether men are remaining within traditional masculine jobs or crossing traditional boundaries into more emotional, and personal care work. We examine organization, local area effect, and service provision on the probability of attracting more men to the workforce. The analysis utilizes multivariate statistics and mixed-effect models. The findings highlight both horizontal and vertical segregation in the types of jobs undertaken by men in the LTC sector. A research agenda is identified.     

Swampwalls: dark matter and the lumpen army of art

Dominant notions of contemporary art are being overturned not by some radical avant-garde theory or movement, but instead by an “uprising” from within the confines of the “art factory,” as well as by newly embodied instances of informal everyday creativity that high culture has long overlooked. Theorists Negt and Kluge might have described this insurrection as the partial unblocking of a counter-public or proletarian sphere: a realm of fragmented identities and working class fantasy generated in response to the alienating conditions of capitalism. A more specific cultural interpretation suggests this mutiny from within and assault from below is the irrepressible brightening of “creative dark matter:” that marginalized and systematically underdeveloped aggregate of creative productivity, which nonetheless reproduces the material and symbolic economy of high culture. The results are explosive, or at least potentially so as this long, pent-up shadow archive spills out into the once forbidden dwelling place of mainstream law and order and high cultural privilege. Meanwhile, a new wave of socially engaged art is thriving on the margins of the art world. Like an enormous production warehouse this “post-public” creativity is developing sustainable farming, reenacting historical labor demonstrations, providing public services lost to decades of deregulatory economic policy, and initiating local bartering systems and environmental cleanups. Its vitality is something Joseph Beuys could have only dream about. And not surprisingly even this “autonomous” and “Interventionist” art is selectively becoming part of the mainstream culture industry through what Gilles Deleuze describes as an “apparatus of capture.” Nevertheless, one result of this new confrontation reveals this vibrant imaginary “from below” is pushing artistic production, pushing also discourse, pedagogy and cultural institutions into radically re-thinking definitions and possibilities not only involving the possibilities of contemporary avant-garde art practices, but also about the very nature of creativity, democracy, and political agency more broadly.     

Working Girls: Femininity and Entrapment in Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls

Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1966) and Grace Metalious's Peyton Place (1956) are novels that have long exerted a powerful hold on the popular imagination. The bestselling Peyton Place was adapted into a successful film in 1957 before becoming an iconic television series, running from 1964 to 1969. Valley of the Dolls was similarly re-imagined in two films, Valley of the Dolls (1967) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), which, even today, retain a cult following. These books are typically remembered for their scandalous bringing to light of such ‘taboo’ issues as adultery, abortion, female sexuality and sexual abuse. But this article suggests that Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls are equally preoccupied with a sympathetic examination of the role of women in the post-war workplace. In both of these novels, the process of female self-fashioning is integrally related to a woman's entry into the workforce, and to the making and controlling of her own money. But this entry into the male-dominated workforce is inherently fraught with danger, and Metalious and Susann expose some of the myriad ways in which the so-called ‘American Dream’ is contingent on the entrapment, suppression and regulation of various forms of female desire and agency.     

Beyond trade unions’ strategy? The social construction of precarious workers organizing in the city of Buenos Aires

The paper presents preliminary findings of qualitative research, case study based, on the organization and collective mobilization of two groups of precarious workers in the city of Buenos Aires. Contrary to research that looks at trade unions’ institutional strategies for organizing precarious workers and at workers’ responses to these, the article starts with a bottom-up approach centred on workers’ self-activity. This helps to show empirically how a complex net of structural and contextual factors, which includes the spatial organization of the labour process, the institutional and legal framework and the socio-political context, creates material circumstances that generate processes of workers’ association. This approach is rooted in long-standing theoretical debates about the structuring of workers’ collective interests and action and helps to ground debates on the perspectives of precarious workers’ organization within the context of currently and locally existing capitalist relations rather than in more abstracted trade unions’ strategies and responses.     

在市场经济条件下进一步 做优做强工会企事业的几点思考

工会企事业是工运事业的重要组成部分。办好工会企事业对于提升工会组织的履职能力和服务能力,扩大工会组织的社会影响力,增强工会组织的号召力和凝聚力,有着极为重要的作用。多年来,各级工会组织高度重视企事业建设与发展,经过持续努力,逐步形成了具有工会特色、适应职工群众需求的工会企事业体系,在工会工作中发挥出积极的作用。