Glamorous politics or political glamour? Content analysis of political coverage in Russian glossy magazines

This article analyzes political and social themes of Russia's glossy magazines which represent the few remaining public spaces for surviving freedom of speech and expression in that post-communist country. As authoritarian nature of Russian political system deepens, the democratic openings often appear in unexpected places. Content analysis of two glamour monthlies, one (GQ-Russian Edition) intended for male audience, another (Cosmopolitan-Russia) – for female readership, shows consistently oppositional (anti-Putin) thrust of both publications, but also persistent political gender stereotypes. Analysis of these publications, intended for Russia's nascent urban class – traditionally a social strata most associated with democratic impulses – provides an important explanation behind recent democratic protest activities in Moscow and St. Petersburg.     

Global journalism studies: Beyond panoramas

Abstract

This article examines the challenges that the accelerated globalisation of the media industry pose to journalism education and research, with a particular focus on journalism studies in the global South. Through references to key features of recent debates in the field of journalism studies, the article argues for the adoption of a critical perspective on global journalism studies in research and teaching, the integration of that perspective across journalism curricula and research agenda, and a reflexive and inclusive view of the relationship between global journalism and new media technologies.     

Searching for the Sugar-coated Man

Proclamations of the excellence of the film Searching for Sugarman, directed by Malik Bendjelloul, ignore its contrived narrative. The film violently yokes the singer’s South African popularity to the struggle against apartheid. This article argues that the film capitalizes on white South African nostalgia and that the tours subsequent to the film’s release have offered occasions for the performance or endorsement of this problematic phenomenon. Through describing the suburban approbation of Rodriguez’s music in the 1980 and 1990s and the homogeneity of his audiences, then and now, I suggest that the salvaging of his career and reputation needs to be approached, not ecstatically, but in ways that are cautious and qualified.     

People,personal projects and the challenging of social structures: a contribution to the reflection on the challenges of teaching development studies

Abstract

This article makes a critique of using Post-Development as a tool in teaching an introductory course in development studies. Such a debate was initiated by Harcourt in a previous issue of Third World Quarterly as she reflected on her teaching experience in a European Institution. Harcourt concludes that the lack of engagement of some of the students in the course reflects the unwillingness of privileged middle-class pupils to challenge western lifestyles. I draw on a critical realist meta-theory about the process of learning in higher education to challenge the ontological support of that conclusion and invite her to reconsider her teaching strategy.     

Knowledge and the economy: some critical comments

Abstract

In the 1990s central banking in Europe and the United States witnessed a paradigm change. A central tenet of the new paradigm was that a central bank which acts in a transparent and predictable manner reduces uncertainty for economic actors and will be better able to control inflationary expectations. Thus, central bankers set out to enhance their institution's transparency. In this paper, I argue that transparency is not limited to the release of economic data or information about decision-making procedures. It entails producing a new type of market order and results in a new agencement. This paper focuses on the European Central Bank (ECB) and on one actor it relies on: the media. Based on ethnographic data, I analyse the role of the media in the production of a transparent market order. I find that prevailing new rules, new frames and reward systems preclude journalists from playing the role the ECB would like them to play: the instrumental role of a neutral transmitter of information. The struggle between the two actors is a struggle with words, in which both journalists and central bankers want to manipulate markets with their communicative utterances, albeit in different and frequently opposing ways.     

From nomadic communitarianism to civil socialism: Searching for the roots of civil society in rural Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

This article explores the environmental, historical and cultural factors that influence civic engagement among rural communities in contemporary Kazakhstan. It traces how forms of nomadic communitarianism as a response to the vicissitudes of life on the open Steppe merged with the imposed collectivism of Soviet society in such a manner that the two were able to coexist together in both policy and practice. Drawing on fieldwork among a number of villages in South Kazakhstan, we argue that, together, the nomadic and Soviet pasts still constitute the core values at work in rural communities, influencing the structure of local power relations and the nature of group association and cooperative venture. Rather than disappearing, these values, if anything, are re-emerging as part of an attempt to legitimise Kazakh culture as the core identity of the modern nation state.     

The ‘Bubbling Up’ of Subterranean Politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed ‘subterranean politics’. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their ‘resonance’ among mainstream public opinion—the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. The main findings included:

• ??Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries.

• ??Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere.

• ??This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism.

• ??In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is ‘invisible’ even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European.

The research concludes that the term ‘subterranean politics’ is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis.     

当代中国改革对人学理论的丰富和发展

中国改革的启动、推进与深化的过程就是中国人学的萌发、生长、长果的过程 ,二者有内在的逻辑一致性。 2 0多年的改革在人的本质、人性、人的需要与利益、人的个性等方面促进了人学的发展。加入世贸组织对改革有新的要求 ,必将要求人学的研究在诸如研究方法、研究内容、研究范式等方面有新的突破。     

Unstable Antistatism: The Left, the Right, and The Outlaw Josey Wales

This essay is an examination of the diverse origins of modern conservative antistatism in the United States through an analysis of the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the book on which it was based. The consolidation of a conservative politics in the 1970s was achieved in part by the Right's appropriation of New Left antistatism via older forms of racial discourse. This emphasis on New Left influence helps explain the rise of the New Right in a way that is missed in conventional accounts, while demonstrating more generally that political discourse is always contingent and unstable, and open to unintended articulations.     

An Exploration into Law and Narratives: The Case of Intellectual Property Law of Biotechnology

This essay explores the possibility of applying narrative analysis as a tool for the socio-cultural study of law. Narrative is understood to be both a form of representation of reality, as well as a starting point into the enquiry about the nature of reality itself. Consequently, an analysis of legal narratives could help to assess law’s impact on our understanding of social reality and of ourselves. The narrative context, which is examined for its plot and metaphors, is the intellectual property law of human biotechnology. The legal representation of techno-scientific knowledge in intellectual property law is contrasted against other conceptions of science, especially with the ones that are put forward by scholars in science and technology studies and anthropology. It is argued that the present legal narrative of human biotechnology and intellectual property not only lacks sufficient understanding of the scientific knowledge-making process but also, importantly, that it is in need of a self-reflexive understanding of its own practice. At the end, the possibility of changing the present legal narrative will be probed with the help of different narrative theories of the self and of representation, which have been advanced by White, Taylor and MacIntyre.