Ex-combatants as social activists: war,peace and ideology in Burundi

In both academic literature and policy discourse, ex-combatants are at times depicted as a threat to peace rather than agents of positive change. However, many of my ex-combatant interlocutors in Burundi were working actively on conflict resolution and peace-building projects. In addition, their experience and knowledge of combat was frequently stated as a deterrent for going back to such a situation. Though it may seem contradictory, the reasons my informants gave for having joined the war sounded remarkably similar to motivations for social activism. They usually expressed it as a desire to contribute to a better, more just, community. I argue that ideology played an important part in motivation to join armed groups during the war and carries over in participation in social activism today. These decisions need not be seen as polar opposites, but rather as similar motivations towards contributing to positive change taken in different circumstances.     

Policing Academics: The Arkhè of Transformation in Academic Ranking

This article attempts a properly critical and political analysis of the “police power” immanent to the form and logic of academic rankings, and which is reproduced in the extant academic literature generated around them. In contrast to the democratising claims made of rankings, this police power short-circuits the moment of democratic politics and establishes the basis for the oligarchic power of the State and its status quo. Central in this founding political moment is the notion of the Arkhè, a necessarily asymmetric “distribution of the sensible” that establishes the basis of the political order, in this case an oligarchic political order. Drawing on Foucault and Rancière, the article argues for a necessary “dissensus” with both the ranking practice and its attendant academic literature, as the first step towards a politics of ranking that is properly critical, and therefore genuinely political.     

Democratic engagement in the digital age: youth,social media and participatory politics in Kenya

As the communication world becomes more complex and participatory, social networking sites (SNSs) have emerged as a platform with the potential to invigorate democracy and political engagement. However, the value of SNSs in politics remains contested among researchers. The study reported on in this article was based on a survey of 600 university students, aged between18 and 35, to examine the relationship between social media use and political engagement among the youth in Kenya. The study focused on the extent to which SNSs facilitate consumption of political information and the role of SNSs in influencing political interest, knowledge and behaviour among the youth. The study found that reliance on SNSs is positively associated with political participation; however, this influence is limited, and though useful, it does not radically transform political engagement. Therefore, the capacity of SNSs to shape opinion and influence political preferences is limited but internet based political activities like posting and distributing campaign information and consumption of political content have a bearing on political participation. The study concluded that while SNSs do not seem to have a major direct impact on political choices among users, politicians and other campaign actors cannot ignore the opportunity provided by these platforms in the voter mobilisation process.     

The legacy of compliant activism in autocracies: post-Communist experience

Compliant activism – that is, political activity of the population, either fully supporting the regime, or merely criticizing individual shortcomings of its policies – strengthens authoritarian rule. However, compliant activism can over time turn into non-compliant one. Hence, the regimes need to ensure that the norms of compliant activism are internalized by the society and become self-enforcing. We use the case of the Communist legacies in Russia to show that compliant activism can, indeed, become highly persistent and outlive the regime, where it emerged. Using cross-regional variation in the levels of compliant activism in the contemporary Russia, we demonstrate that it is strongly affected by the variation in the membership share of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The results have broader implications beyond the Russian case and provide relevant insights for studying political activism in autocracies.     

The Perils of Public Intellectualism

Against the background of prophetic and rabbinic thought and action, where ideas of God and the good allowed morality and spirituality to inform one another, Goodman considers the role of public intellectuals today. He cites the expanding electronic media for lengthening the reach and broadening the franchise but narrowing the gaze and the audience of those intellectuals who seek a public role and warns against oversimplification, shrillness, and the hazards of the echo chamber, where pigeonholing and niche marketing shrink one’s audience to the already convinced.

Balloon warriors for North Korean human rights activism: a critique of North Korean defector-activists’ post-humanitarianism

While the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by unraveling the discursive complexity of their activism, little attention has been paid to the way in which that activism compromises the discursive dynamic of the defector community desiring to contest the power of a ruling paradigm within political culture. A critical analysis of North Korean defector balloon warriors who have crusaded against the North Korea regime through airborne leaflet drops at the South–North Korea border illustrates how their uncritical and unquestioned acceptance of liberal human rights can only leave the defector community vulnerable to charges of being politically-futile disparate citizens. The invocations of transnational liberal hegemonic norms obscure and undermine North Korean defectors’ agency of collective engagement in acts of liberal democratic citizenship. Understanding the propagandistic dimension of their dissenting voices can help expand the scope of analysis of liberal democratic posthumanitarian citizenship.     

Remediation of Social Withdrawal in Young Children:

The last 15 years have witnessed a marked increase in the development of intervention techniques designed to promote isolate children's friendships and to increase their peer group interactions. However, there has been a paucity of research directed towards defining social competence and its underlying skill components. With the practitioner in mine, the present report presents a recent intervention strategy for remediating social withdrawal, followed by our current development of a skill deficit model designed to expand our knowledge case of causal contributors. PEERS, a broad-based intervention program, involves all of the child's social agents, thus assuring him/her of entry into the peer group in an atmosphere of social support. Our more comprehensive view of social withdrawal examines deficits in four skill areas: the child's social, language, and motoric competences, and the parents' child-rearing ability. Additional research is needed to pinpoint the precise relationship between these skill components and social withdrawal. With the further contributions of researchers in the field, we foresee the development of a more refined set of intervention procedures which the practitioner may use selectively to meet the individual needs of each child.     

台湾公立大学治理结构改革的审视——基于《大学法》的视角

台湾从1994年以来本着保障学术自由和大学自治的管理理念,以《大学法》的修订为指导,重建公立大学治理结构,其成败经验,值得大陆构建现代大学制度时思考、研究和借鉴。     

Environmentalism of the malcontent: anatomy of an anti-coal power plant struggle in Turkey

This paper introduces the concept of the ‘environmentalism of the malcontent’ to characterise a type of environmental activism that is increasingly common in Turkey. It illustrates its argument by analysing the resistance movement against the proposed Gerze coal power plant. By so doing, it problematises the relationship between class and environmental consciousness as well as the ability of the existing literature to accurately characterise the underlying motivation of movements against development projects. It shows that the mobilisation in Gerze was not rooted only or primarily in environmental concerns but animated by disaffection with, among other things, neoliberal developmentalism, disregard of democratic policy-making and violent suppression of societal dissent by the state. ‘Environmentalism of the malcontent’ describes the way in which long-lasting dissatisfaction with broader processes marking the development trajectory of the country combined with personal experience in radical political action enabled a group of urban, mostly retired, residents of Gerze to successfully collaborate with peasant activists against the construction of the power plant by deploying arguments regarding its potential negative environmental impact.     

Politics at the margins: alternative sites of political involvement among young people in Cameroon

This paper analyses young people’s political discourses and experiences, highlighting their disillusionment with the postcolonial state. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with young people in the city of Bamenda, the article argues that young people’s perspectives and discourses on politics constitute alternative forms of political involvement and resistance. Their actions, inactions and discourses about politics and political personalities are informed by their specific identities and positionalities. However, taken collectively, these voices reveal current national anxieties about the postcolonial state whose legitimacy is widely believed to have eroded.