Bearing Witness: Methods for Researching Oppression and Resistance—A Textbook for Critical Research

This paper forecasts a “fictional” methods textbook for researchers interested in studying social oppression and resistance. The volume moves between historic and contemporary writings on methods, with particular interest in questions of objectivity and subjectivity, history and psychology, relations among units of analysis, expert and construct validity, and the ever-thorny ambition of generalizability. Crafted with inspiration from Kurt Lewin, Carolyn Payton, Ignacio Martín-Baró, and many contemporary critical writers, the book is designed to provoke conversations about social research, asking—For what? With whom? and If not now, when? The essay is written to incite a re-membering, and re-thinking, of critical methods for the social psychological study of oppression and resistance.     

Jewish resistance in Poland's eastern borderlands during the second world war, 1939–41

After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, a network of Jewish underground organizations and active conspiratorial groups was established. Its objective was to resist the violent imposition of the Soviet system, to preserve Jewish culture and religion and, for those with a Zionist orientation, to work for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The Zionist parties and organizations among them were particularly active, especially the youth groups. The fate of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe under the Soviet occupation of 1939–41 remains understandingly overshadowed by the tragic events of the Holocaust. As a result, the activities of this Jewish underground are not widely known and have received little attention from scholars. Only in recent years have historians researching the history of Jews in eastern Poland begun to look more closely at Jewish resistance and especially at Zionist activity under Soviet occupation. These scholars have, however, relied exclusively on the eyewitness accounts of the few survivors. At the same time, Polish and Russian historians conducting intensive research on the war-time Soviet occupation of eastern Poland have published contemporary Soviet documents that confirm the existence of this Jewish underground. The material currently available shows that the Jewish underground was more widespread than previously thought, and that the Soviet authorities viewed Jewish resistance groups, and indeed any clandestine activity, as a serious threat to their rule.     

In Search of Alternatives: The Making of Grassroots Politics and Power in Argentina

This article analyses ethnographically the reconfigurations of the state and relations of power through their dynamic interactions with subaltern alternatives that emerged in the 2001 uprising in Argentina. In this regard, it counters influential interpretations of these events articulated within John Holloway’s framework of ‘anti‐power’, which ignores the reconstruction of the state, and rank and file trade unionism. The article concludes that intensified class and political struggles in the region offer new spaces for contesting hegemonic reinventions of populism and ‘top‐down’ socialism in Latin America.     

正当业务行为概念辨析

正当业务行为概念是正当业务行为理论研究的基础和前提。界定正当业务行为的概念，应当综合考虑其法律归属、行为属性和规范要素。本文重新审视并界定了正当业务行为的概念，揭示了其基本特征。     

略论酌定情节法定化——以最高人民法院《关于依法做好抗震救灾期间审判工作切实维护灾区社会稳定的通知》为切入点

最高人民法院《关于依法做好抗震救灾期间审判工作切实维护灾区社会稳定的通知》实质是对酌定情节的具体运用。为使我国的最高司法机关从几乎事事解释、案案指示的费心劳力工作中解脱出来,且最大限度地制掣法官刑事自由裁量权之行使,最大限度实现刑事个案正义,我国的刑事立法应参酌域外刑事立法,将较为成熟的酌定情节予以法定化、明晰化。     

Beyond the literary veil – Women writing Africa: The northern region (2009)

Abstract

Whenever African literature is discussed there is an articulated incorrect assumption that this relates to all the regions of Africa, except North Africa. A related further assumption is that only men in North Africa write. Female writers from the North barely receive critical attention, although they have been writing creative works. The aim of this article is to dispel the notion of literary drought when describing North Africa. Using the text, Women writing Africa: The northern region, the article demonstrates the different sensibilities that female authors in North Africa have created and manifest, when writing against patriarchy as well as against ideological philistinism within their communities. It is argued that female authors from North Africa – African-Arab women – are versatile in their imaginations as they engage with social reality from the perspective of creative art as well as political discourse. The article concludes that this assertion removes the literary veil so that North African female authors can begin to be appreciated artistically, more than has been the situation up to now.     

系统与结构：刑事社会抗拒的动力机制研究

刑事社会抗拒是个人借刑事犯罪为手段实施的对社会制度安排的抗拒。打压、合法性、相对剥夺感、被剥夺境遇的难以改变以及行为者的边缘化人格构成了刑事社会抗拒动力系统的基本因子。作为外部动力的打压与行为者心理动因（合法性、相对剥夺感、被剥夺境遇的难以改变认知）交互影响、共同“型塑”了抗争者的边缘化人格．抗争者的边缘化人格又反作用于行为者的心理动因进而改变着抗争方式、强度及其与打压对立互动的形态。动力因子间内在的能量交互的结果是建立了动力的静态过程结构和动态交互结构。     

“A Bureaucratic Trap:” Free,Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and Wind Energy Development in Juchitán,Mexico

ABSTRACT

On November 2014, the first Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) consultation was called for the Eólica del Sur wind project in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexico. Lasting eight months, the consultation was responding not only to the UN International Labor Organization’s (ILO) convention 169 that Mexico signed in 1990 but also to widespread uprisings against wind energy projects in the region. This article begins with an FPIC literature review, followed by sections examining the consultation in Juchitán, its spatial layout, the actors involved and its repressive atmosphere. The subsequent section analyzes the discursive techniques deployed by the FPIC technical committee (TC) which—despite unanswered questions and popular opposition to the wind energy project—granted project approval on 30 June 2015. The final section concludes that the FPIC consultation undermines Indigenous autonomy and serves as a counter-insurrectionary device, reinforcing a context of substantial political and economic asymmetry between state, corporate and elite interest and Indigenous fishermen and farmers. The FPIC consultation in Juchitán reinforced state power and simultaneously serves as a marketing platform for development projects, thereby creating an illusion of real dialogue, negotiation and, by extension, democratic decision making. Despite efforts to have the wind project approved, resistance groups’ temporarily halted construction.     

Disconnection and resistance: anti-terrorism and citizenship in the UK

The corroding impacts of anti-terrorism measures on citizenship have been much discussed in recent years. Drawing on qualitative research from the UK, this article argues that citizens do indeed frequently feel that aspects of citizenship – such as rights, duties, identity claims and the ability to participate in the public sphere – have been significantly dampened by developments in this policy area. At the same time, however, participants in our research also articulated a number of strategies through which they or others have sought to resist the logics, exercise and impacts of anti-terrorism powers. These included voicing explicit opposition to particular measures, resisting ‘outsider’ or ‘victim’ subject positions, and a refusal to withdraw from established forms of political engagement. Whilst such resistance should not be overstated, we argue that these strategies emphasise the co-constitutive rather than linear relationship between public policy and citizenship. Anti-terrorism powers do indeed impact upon citizenship claims, for instance in the curtailment of formal rights. Equally, the everyday, lived, experiences and practices of citizenship contribute to, and help shape, the perceptions and understandings of anti-terrorism policy from within the citizenry     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes practices of counter-surveillance—particularly against closed-circuit television systems in urban areas—and theorizes their political implications. Counter-surveillance is defined as intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technologies to challenge institutional power asymmetries. Such activities can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over the Internet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society. The main argument is that current modes of activism tend to individualize surveillance problems and methods of resistance, leaving the institutions, policies, and cultural assumptions that support public surveillance relatively insulated from attack.