Racial Poltiics

In the last decade, as hip-hop has emerged as a political force among youth,regimes across the world have intervened to promote some sub-styles and sideline others, in an attempt to press-gang the genre to disparate political ends. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez funds hip-hop schools around the country, and invites Bolivarian raperos onto his Sunday television show, “Aló, Presidente.” In the US, Michael Steele has tried to give the Republican Party a “hip-hop makeover” to bring its ideas to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” The US Army, in partnership with The Source magazine, has used hip-hop culture in its “Taking It to the Streets”campaign to recruit African-American youth.

Governments are also sending hip-hop culture to far-flung corners of the globe.  From its putative birthplace in the Bronx, hip-hop has traveled to become, at once, a means of protest and a tool of public diplomacy, counter-terrorism, democracy promotion and economic development. It is in the post-September 11 “war on terror” and in Western states’ dealings with Muslim-majority states and Muslims in Europe that government mobilization of hip-hop is most noticeable.  While European states are using the genre to integrate and“moderate” their Muslim populations, the US has made hip-hop part of its outreach to the Muslim world. The very music blamed for a range of social ills at home—violence,misogyny, consumerism, academic underperformance—is being deployed abroad in the hopes of making America safer and better liked. The officials behind the sundry hip-hop diplomacy initiatives invariably point to the success of jazz diplomacy during the Cold War as evidence of the “smart power” potential of music.

The rise of psy discourse has been the subject of considerable academic attention, but one of its most popular and visible forms, the self-help book, has received comparatively little attention. This article provides a Foucauldian analysis of a selection of relationship manuals; it examines the ways in which they set up a relation of the reader’s self to itself, and it explores the ethical valorizations and teleologies therein. The emphasis on the relationship with the self, and the development of mastery over the emotions advocated in the books, is related to the values held in liberal democratic societies.

The following paper overviews the current statistical picture of domestic violence experienced by both single and married women within Iranian society.
Although numerous independent studies on domestic violence against women and children have been conducted on small scales in Iran, they have never been widely published or utilized due to political issues.
The discussion in this paper is directly derived from the only widely accredited research carried out on a massive scale, supported and funded by the Iranian government to tackle the issue of domestic abuse. Since the study is currently only available in Farsi, this paper is, in part, an attempt to make the information available to a broader audience. Furthermore, it attempts to look for underlying etiology to understand better the crisis women face within the complex geopolitical, economic, religious, ethnic, and social arena which makes up modern-day Iran.

The history of racial domination in the United States is multifaceted and therefore cannot be explained through simple reference to ideologies or institutional structures. At the microlevel, racial domination is reproduced through social interactions. In this article, I draw on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to social interaction to illuminate the development of the racialized interaction order whereby actors racialized as white impose a set of implicit rules and underlying assumptions onto interracial interactions. I examine archetypal instances of racialized social interactions in America’s history and present-day to reveal the role of social interactions in racially structuring social institutions and everyday lives. First, I discuss the development and racialization of chattel slavery and its routinization as an interaction order. Next, I explore the dramaturgical and symbolic significance of the postbellum emergence and spread of racial terrorism such as white lynch mobs. I then analyze the contemporary discursive and performative strategies of white racial dominance and aspects of the contemporary racialized interaction order such as the de facto racialization of spatial boundaries, mass media and the digital sphere, and police violence. I conclude by discussing the significance of interactional analysis for understanding the present racialized social system.

The presentation focused on communist festivals and celebrations as associated with a specific visual stereotypes and a religious mimicked power iconography (we can speak of new rituals and civil religion), exhibiting the communist happiness “life has become more joyous, comrades” (Petrone, 2000). The paper uses a series of concepts and theories related to Soviet propaganda and in particular celebrations (Baiburin & Piir, 2009) and festivals (von Geldern, 1993; Petrone, 2000;  Simpson, 2004). The case study is focused on a very interesting and genuine example of such events - the 4th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) held in 1953, in Bucharest,  Romania – rather ignored by research (with few exceptions, mainly the section dedicated by Ştefan Borbély as editor of a collective volume on totalitarianism and culture, Caietele Echinox, volume 7/2004). The presentation approaches the event both as a popular culture youth manifestation (and its specific features in the unusual context of a communist satellite country during the first decade of the Cold War) and the functions it played within propaganda. More specifically, it deals with the manner in which these were reflected in the discourse (including the visual rhetoric) promoted by the main periodicals of the time (particularly those with a cultural profile such as "Flacӑra" or those addressing young audiences, such as "Scânteia tineretului"). Archive documents are used to offer the unofficial reception of the festival among the foreign participants. Finally, the approach is based on perspectives and concepts related to popular culture which reveal that adapted and reinterpreted, prove to be extremely useful tools in approaching phenomena related to the former Eastern bloc and that the specificity of these manifestations offer interesting comparisons and open new debates.

Starting from the idea that discrimination is one of the most important manifestations of equality, and that the eradication of the one is a necessary condition for the effectiveness of the other, the author gives a brief overview of the history of racial discrimination, highlighting its similarities with sexual discrimination. She explains how these forms of discrimination have underpinned all means of production and all forms of political organization, but have so far not been taken seriously vis-à-vis the construction of a more egalitarian society. This overview begins by considering the discrimination that underpinned the Ancient Greek idea of equality, and ends with the emergence of the concept of equality during the Enlightenment, when there was an increased preoccupation with the «rights of the individual». The author ends her historical explanation at that particular historical moment because it was during the Age of Enlightenment that a critical theory first emerged, demanding universal equality, rejecting formality, and denouncing the defects of reason for being loaded with prejudice. It was feminist theory that first proposed the eradication of prejudice concerning race and sex. The coherence of its approach to the eradication of prejudice by including both men and women in its concept of equality has not been considered by constitutional law, for which reason the author proposes that possible solutions to the problem of racial discrimination may come from the application of contributions to antidiscrimination law aimed at eradicating sexual discrimination, the result of the influence of feminist theory on the law.

Without conducting much analysis on the multiethnic texture of the country, colonial ethnographers and ethnohistorians obsessed with the ideology of ‘Somali homogeneity’, and stakeholders of the nationalist sentiments of self-same Somalia successfully demonstrated the Horn of Africa nation as an ‘egalitarian’ society pursuing a cultural mode of ‘pastoral democracy.’1 To break away from that
erroneous diction, this essay aims at problematizing the vagueness of that notion by introducing a counter narrative that unravels not only the existence of other ethnic groups and cultures but also an enormous nature of subjugation, prejudice and discrimination-factors antithetical to the ideals of egalitarianism. For the sake of unlearning that early and enduring misinterpretation, this essay presents an
account of the discrimination against the Bantu/Jareer people and their place in the Somali social and political system. It attempts at offering a realistic situation as compared to the idealistic image of the colonial writers’ and early Somali scholarship’s self-same tutelage. At another level, the revelation in the study challenges the fallacy in
Prof. Lidwien Kapteijns’s recently formed discourse that the Bantu Jareer people benefited significant political and economic consideration in independent Somali, an extremely mendacious concoction which, despite being absent from the available literature, Prof. Kapteijns’s work shied away from producing empirically based,
factual evidence to support her argument (M. Eno, 2013b:21-31). In its general scope, the study intends to contribute to the principle of “understand[ing] Somalia for what it is and not what it ought to be” (Kusow 2004: xii).

This thesis has two principal aims. The first, and more general, is to illuminate the struggle of Afro-Ecuadorians, and highlight their attempts to improve the wellbeing of their communities and eliminate racism from the country. Afro-descendant peoples have often been disregarded in academic disciplines that do not focus specifically on race and its intersections, such as Development Studies. Moreover, the struggles of Afro-Latin American peoples have long been overshadowed by those of African Americans in the U.S. and Indigenous peoples in Latin American. This has certainly been the case in Ecuador, and this paper is an attempt at balancing the scales and making visible the hard work of these communities.
The second is to demonstrate how political and social transformations in Ecuador have affected the political opportunities available to the Afro-Ecuadorian civil society. This thesis specifically sheds light on how individual activists and officials fight for racial justice and equality, and how their struggle interacts with the state’s agenda and rhetoric of inclusion, equality, and national development. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews and observations, I endeavor to illuminate how Afro-Ecuadorian civil society's complex, relationship with the state has influenced its capacity to mobilize and whether it has altered racial power dynamics in the nation. By using race as a lens through which to observe political processes, I also hope to make more generalizable arguments about the limitations, tensions, and possibilities that arise in eras of democratic reform. Here, I specifically examine the disparity between reformed ideals and reality, and analyze how Afro civil society works alleviate that.
I argue that the political changes ushered in by Correa's government have created new and more expansive political spaces within the state for Afro-Ecuadorian civil society to make demands. Paradoxically, the opening of political spaces has somewhat limited the possibilities and scope of Afro civil society’s mobilization in, as the state under Rafael Correa has taken ownership over the Ecuador’s ‘racial project’, and reduced civil society’s autonomy. As a consequence, I contend that activists struggle by working within the political frameworks crafted by the Correa administration. This marks a departure from past forms of activism, where activists pursued social change through mass mobilization and outside pressure on the state. Therefore, I make the case that these new opportunities spaces have not necessarily led to changes in racial power dynamics in Ecuador. Connecting this to a broader argument, I contend that because of the state's fundamental role in establishing prevailing racial hierarchies, racial movements can seldom hope to attain power to achieve more radical goals of altering the status quo. Thus, I show how in Ecuador the state as led by Correa has continued to dictate and control racial power dynamics despite its rhetoric of citizen participation and political inclusion.

Albanien, das isolierteste Land Osteuropas während der kommunistischen Herrschaft, bemüht sich seit 13 Jahren den Demokratisierungsprozess erfolgreich abzuschließen und in die europäische Gemeinschaft integriert zu werden. Eine der Hauptvoraussetzungen dafür ist die Stärkung der Zivilgesellschaft, deren Bedeutung immer wichtiger wird wegen der zunehmenden Enttäuschung der Bürger von der Politik und der sozialen Lage. Das Thema der Zivilgesellschaft scheint noch ein politisches Hauptthema zu sein.

Dem hohen Ansehen entspricht nicht das Ergebnis der Umfragen, nach denen mehr als die Hälfte der Bevölkerung keine klare Vorstellung von der Rolle und Bedeutung der Zivilgesellschaft hat. Das Ziel dieser Studie ist es, nicht nur die Zivilgesellschaft als neues Phänomen in Albanien zu beschreiben und zu analysieren, sondern auch den allgemeinen Transformationsprozess, der eng mit der Zivilgesellschaft verbunden ist.
In der Studie beschäftige ich mich mit verschiedenen Theorien über die Bedeutung und Rolle der Zivilgesellschaft. Die unterschiedlichen Positionen sind Zeichen dafür, dass es für die Zivilgesellschaft viele Definitionen und damit verbundene Vorstellungen gibt, die ihrerseits von verschiedenen politischen, sozialen oder psychologischen Vorstellungen abhängig sind. Durch diese geschichtliche Analyse möchte ich die These bestätigen, dass Albanien keine Tradition der politischen und zivilgesellschaftlichen Kultur aus der Vergangenheit als Erbe übernehmen kann. Der Mangel an Tradition hat die neue Entwicklung der albanischen Zivilgesellschaft und Demokratie in den letzten 13 Jahren beeinflusst. Die Akteure und Institutionen der Zivilgesellschaft könnten eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Stärkung der Demokratie und Förderung albanischen Integration spielen. Ich stelle verschiedene Schwierigkeiten und komplexe Probleme beim Aufbau der albanischen Zivilgesellschaft dar, vor allem die Rolle der Zivilgesellschaft bei der Lösung der zentralen gesellschaftlichen Probleme und der Bewältigung der wichtigen zukünftigen Herausforderungen.

In a San Juan, Puerto Rico, concert held in February 2007, the pop singer Ricky Martin made an obscene gesture with his finger while singing a line about having his picture taken with President Bush. This essay uses the backlash emanating from the gesture to illustrate a two-part argument: (1) after September 11, 2001, American citizenship (both political and cultural) became a tenuously tied to ideas about patriotism and non-immigrant status, and (2) patriotism was linked to an unyielding support for President Bush and his administration. We can see demarcations between notions of “the citizen” versus “the other” in United States mainstream discussions of the finger incident. Responses to the reports about Ricky Martin’s gesture showed a distrust of his Puerto Rican body, which stemmed from a general distrust of deemed non- and un-American bodies. The essay outlines a specific relationship between social narratives, popular culture, and post-9/11 constructions of citizenship.

This article focuses on the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987). It is my goal to demonstrate how Freyre applied Nietzschean ideas to his interpretation of Brazilian society in an attempt to concretize the prophecy of the “new man” in the shape of the multiracial “mestiço.” By Nietzschean ideas I mean ideas indebted to Nietzsche directly or indirectly and reflected in the rhetorical, stylistic and argumentative strategies used by Freyre. It is not my intention to discuss whether Freyre interpreted Nietzsche’s ideas correctly; rather, I wish to highlight parallels to Nietzschean concepts and to indicate how the eclectic, even opportunistic, use of Nietzsche’s work allowed Freyre to move the discussion on Brazilian identity in a new direction.

Casa-grande & Senzala (1933), a obra secular de Gilberto Freyre, foi traditionalmente interpretado de um ponto de vista sociólogo e histórico. Esta interpretação deixou duas questões essenciais em aberto: 1) Como se pode explicar que Freyre interpretou a noção de miscegenação de uma forma (muito) mais positiva do que sociólogos anteriores e 2) Como se pode explicar as tendências elitistas e aristocráticas na sua obra? Este artigo explore estas duas perguntas analisando a influência em Freyre da filosofia de Friedrich Nietzsche através da interpretação de Henry L. Mencken. Argumenta que a influência de Mencken foi maior do que tradicionalmente tem sido admitido e que na obra de Mencken sobre Nietzsche se pode encontrar a mesma interpretação de miscigenação que Freyre mais tarde explorou em Casa-grande & Senzala. Argumenta também que Mencken profundamente influenciou Freyre com as suas ideias aristocráticas e elitistas."

This article traces two broad discourses concerning gender in a selection of relationship manuals from 1974 to 2004. On the one hand are manuals promoting traditional gender roles, and on the other are those that promote financial and emotional independence for women. In contrast to other analyses, I argue that these approaches cannot be categorised into a simplistic dichotomy of ‘feminist’ and ‘patriarchal,’ but that they are better understood as being bound up with conservative and liberal discourses of the self. I further demonstrate that these approaches both assume and require types of self that are somewhat removed from their historical antecedents and should be understood as neo variants.

Provocative, authoritative and timely ...

(NewStatesman)



A crisis makes you re-think your life. The recent economic crisis is no exception. All of us are now thinking how the world could be run differently. Despite this, a radical alternative has hardly emerged to mobilise the masses, which begs the question: What is radical politics today? In this book, leading academics, politicians, journalists and activists attempt to pinpoint an answer, debating the issues facing radical politics in the 21st Century. Rarely united in their opinions, they collectively interogate the character and spirit of being radical in our times.

Including original contributions from Zygmunt Bauman, Will Hutton, Frank Furedi, Clare Short, Ken Worpole, Nick Cohen, Hilary Wainwright, Paul Kingsnorth, Chantal Mouffe, Terrell Carver, Edward W. Soja, David Chandler, Dora Apel, Doreen Massey, Jason Toynbee, James Martin, Michael J. Watts, Jeremy Gilbert and Jo Littler, Gregor McLennan, Tariq Modood, Amir Saeed & David Bates, Alastair Bonnett, Nigel Thrift, Sheila Jasanoff, Saul Newman, David Featherstone, James Heartfield, Alejandro Colás and Jason Edwards, David Boyle, Saskia Sassen.




Explores the spirit and character of radical politics, at this pivotal moment in history.


Thirty well known and influential commentators write original 3000 word essays.


Offers thought provoking and often conflicting opinions.


The only current wide ranging survey of the state of radical politics, post-crisis.


Accessibly written for the general public and student audiences.




Recommendations

"This stimulating and impressively diverse collection of essays helps us to begin re-thinking our predicament. Anyone who finds themselves in agreement with all the authors here must be seriously confused, since several of the pieces offer directly contradictory analyses. But the strength of the book as a whole lies precisely in bringing different political traditions into productive dialogue"

(Red Pepper)



"This is a bold, brave and timely book. As we emerge, blinking into the light after three decades of neo-liberal darkness, Jonathan Pugh has put together a collection of essays that will provoke and provide clues to the question of what comes next; what indeed is radical politics today?"

Neal Lawson (Compass).




"an excellent new book of essays"

(Town and Country Planning Magazine)



"Jonathan Pugh gathers some of the most innovative and insightful voices from Britain and beyond to stage a series of debates on the central issues facing radical politics today.  This collection is a model for the kinds of discussion we need to move forward."

Michael Hardt (Duke University).





‘A fascinating and pithy tome’

(The Catholic Herald)




"At a time when all ideologies are either exhausted or have become irrelevant, the need for a truly radical politics can hardly be exaggerated. Radical politics is about rethinking the common sense, the taken for granted assumptions, of the age. This timely and well-planned collection of essays by distinguished and concerned scholars throws much new light on where we should be looking for new ideas. It represents a major contribution to the ongoing debate on the problems of our times." 
Lord Bhikhu Parekh






"In the present moment of rapid and fundamental political and economic change we need sustained critical discussion of the kinds of alternative politics available to us. In What is Radical Politics Today? leading political theorists initiate this timely discussion by addressing both possibilities and obstacles from a wide range of perspectives."
James Tully (University of Victoria).




"With impeccable timing, this volume provides a stimulating range of perspectives on what radical politics can offer during this period of crisis and change.  It deserves to be widely read and debated."
Ruth Lister (Loughborough University)



"As the most immediate effects of a global economic and financial crisis seem to be ebbing from our consciousness, the authors in this collection reaffirm the urgent need for a different kind of politics.  One after the other they draw a picture of a world ill at ease with itself: addicted to consumption yet unjust in its rewards; obsessed with the idea of the global at the expense of an engagement with the real; aware yet narcissistic.  Helpless with fear, paternalism and debt.  But the book is, above all, in the words of one contributor 'a challenge to fatalism'.  The chapters sketch out a radical politics for the 21st century based on the rediscovery of our human powers to invent and adapt--a rebuilding of the state's management and redistributive capacities, a revaluing of autonomous behaviour and critical judgement, the prioritising of a 'social planet' over a 'social state' and even, a repudiation of near-sacrosanct institutions.  No doubt some injunctions will rile, but though this book may fail to comfort, it will not fail to challenge or provoke."
Catherine Fieschi
(Director, Counterpoint, The Think Tank of the British Council)





"There's a world to win, but only if the Left is possessed of bright ideas, inspiring aspirations and brilliant strategies. This book - rich in insight - assembles some of our leading thinkers to consider what sort of Left can unlock the progressive potential contained in this moment of early 21st century crisis. Has the mainstream Left conceded far too much to the liberals and conservatives this last 30 years? If so, what sort of Left can win hearts and minds in this moment of crisis? The answers to these important questions are the stuff of this excellent book."
Noel Castree (Manchester University).






"This is a wonderfully salutary and visionary collection of widely different opinions on how we can think about our world in these 'interesting' times."
Emily Young (Sculptor, and of Penguin Café Orchestra).






"Like an exploding star, the radical Left in the UK has disintegrated and its fragments have flown off in all directions. People who once thought they were engaged in a common project can no longer agree about where they are going, yet alone how they should get there. If you feel radical but confused read these essays. They may make you even more confused, but they may also help you decide where to go next."
Bob Rowthorn (Cambridge University).





"If you are looking for a rich diversity of views and fierce arguments about radical politics today, then this is the book for you!"
Achin Vanaik (Delhi Univeristy).





"With the aim of understanding the forces and boundaries of a genuinely radical politics, this volume begins to interrogate the models, figures and reach of the structureless moment that currently commands political tropology and life."
Avital Ronell ‎ (New York University).







"Timely, engaging and bold.  This book provides intellectual, moral and political challenge for any reader on a question which urgently needs lucid answers: what is it to be radical today?"

(former Director of Demos, Associate Director of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, and Policy Director for Australia's Deputy Prime Minister).