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States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity
Abstract
Whether in characterizing Catherine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, this text pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules." True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection. Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political li
... How we understand borders relates to how we approach human rights, and in particular how we constitute the categories of the human and the universal. Do we understand the person more as a highly individuated entity with clear, relatively impermeable boundaries of personhood or more as a relational, 91 borderlands | culture, politics, law and earth contextual being (Bawaka et al. 2016: Graham 2008Massey 2005;Brown W 1995)? This second, more relational view might include only human persons. ...
... Would a relational emphasis enable more inclusive and far-reaching approaches to working to undo patterns of suffering? As discussed later, how the human is identified affects what is visible as suffering or harm, but it also affects the models of agency involved in pursuing and promoting rights (Brown W 1995;Brown M 2002). ...
... Because prevailing notions of human rights are grounded in a Eurocentric ontology and because of the implication of that ontology in the colonialist history and entrenched inequities of the contemporary world order, human rights concepts and practices have faced persistent criticism as 'Western' and 'imperialist' in their operations in non-Western or post-colonial contexts (Nandy 1998). Human rights and the liberal foundations of those rights have also been critiqued as masculinist and recognising only a narrow range of difference (Brown W 1995;Tully 1995). Nevertheless, notions and practices of human rights are not static even if change is often slow, difficult and uncertain (Bunch & Reilly 2019). ...
Notions of human rights and the technologies deploying those notions, legally, institutionally, in advocacy and social discourse, enact a tangled knot of contesting and asserting borders. Universalist assertions of human rights seek to transcend national borders, appealing to a wider grasp of the human, but the formal pursuit of rights establishes rights as mutually constitutive with the state. In advocacy, calling on human rights is a way of recognising people’s political, economic and socio-cultural needs, dignity and suffering, beyond state borders. The idea of the human and the universal implicit in prevailing notions of human rights, however, reproduces dominant Eurocentric ontologies of individual and collective life, and patrols a narrowly conceived territory of the universal. These ontologies can be profoundly counterproductive in practice. Because notions of human rights are one of the few internationally available tools for working against the systemic imposition of suffering, we need to work with them in ways that are more open to different ways of being human and of grasping our individual and collective lives. The discussion concludes by sketching a more relational, dialogic conception of human rights.
... Reforms envisage a "new" social order and urges to pursue untried courses of action that change the underlying conditions that thwart full attainment of normal well-being, in the face of unprecedented problems and issues [2]. Though the idea of rights and its realization in itself if debatable [3,4], the complete absence of the rights discourse in the disaster recovery conceptualization is a significant gap. The review of literature on disaster recovery, especially the definitions do not reflect the idea of right. ...
... These scholars believe in the potentiality or possibility of learning from subversive and radical practices and thus overcome the hopelessness created by the critical literature regarding the unchallenged hegemony of neoliberal government rationalities and stiffening of alternatives. Hence we draw from scholars outside the discipline of disaster studies who focus on issues of structural inequality and injustice from the critical lens of the politics of neo liberalism [3,4,19,20,32,33] and that of the ontology of possibility and potentiality [29][30][31] to understand lived experiences of structural inequality and injustice and the community's initiatives to address it in the post disaster recovery context. Spaces beyond the public arena where everyday social relations and processes that create categorical social positions, privileging one over the other play out, are key to understanding and addressing structural inequality and injustice [20]. ...
... The cases also demonstrate the potential of resistance to address the material realities of vulnerability but highlights the struggles or barriers that it faces in exercising most basic rights (or the imperiled capacity to exercise its most basic right) when supportive environment falls apart or are emphatically unsupportive. The feminist critiques of neoliberalism [3,45,47] lament the shrinking of alternative imaginaries and are skeptical about acts of externalizing rights and identity claims as they lend limited possibility for political action, foregrounds deeper identification with one's marginality and dependence on the very oppressors [3]. However, the proponents of ontology of possibility [29][30][31] bring forth the possibility of subversively co-opting neo liberal rationalities to counter the vulnerabilities of being exposed. ...
Formal interventions are rationalized to be irreplaceable, especially with marginalized communities that are presumed to lack capacity. It is event centric and differ considerably from the community's experience of disaster risk and recovery within the everyday context. Thus, community engagement with multiple formal institutions that often fail to address recovery needs of the most marginalized, is inevitable. These contradictions lead to varied forms of community assertion towards addressing structural inequalities and injustices. In this paper we explore these contradictions by drawing from the work of scholars who recognize the limits of procedural justice and push for distributive justice, especially by focusing on grassroots processes using the lens of the politics of neo-liberalism and ontology of possibilities. Using a multi-sited instrumental case study approach the paper explores community's lived experiences, factors contributing to the persistence of structural inequality and injustice, and the alternate conception of justice and their assertions, in the disaster recovery context. The two case studies - Vistapit Mukti Vahini and Thayillam, inform an alternate theoretical conception of disaster recovery embedded in structural inequalities and injustices through the following three perspectives: Firstly how disaster risk and recovery emerge from historical and everyday lived reality of marginalized communities, their social relations and resulting material conditions; Secondly how challenging everyday social relations, processes and injustices is central to the community's alternate conception and assertion for disaster recovery; and finally how community assertion and recovery relies on the mobilization of vulnerability, which could mean being exposed and agentic at the same time.
... Whereas their experience abroad is characterised mostly by informal negotiations with employers, and only a few interactions with the state bureaucracy, the challenges they face back in Albania differ. Advancing a feminist theory of the late modernist state, Wendy Brown (1995) examines how gender marks state power. The masculine state described by Brown (1995) is diffuse, encountered and experienced by subjects on different scales. ...
... Advancing a feminist theory of the late modernist state, Wendy Brown (1995) examines how gender marks state power. The masculine state described by Brown (1995) is diffuse, encountered and experienced by subjects on different scales. In deepening involvement with the government, women exchange dependency on individual men for regulation by contemporary institutions and processes of male domination (Brown, 1995, 173). ...
This chapter explores the trajectories of those participants who migrated internally to Tirana for reasons other than education. The data draws from interviews conducted with eight women, the majority of whom had already married when Communism collapsed. These women provide distinctive insights as they stand on the verge of and link the late communist years with the post-communist period. The narratives of the following eight women are discussed and analysed at length in this chapter.
... Whereas their experience abroad is characterised mostly by informal negotiations with employers, and only a few interactions with the state bureaucracy, the challenges they face back in Albania differ. Advancing a feminist theory of the late modernist state, Wendy Brown (1995) examines how gender marks state power. The masculine state described by Brown (1995) is diffuse, encountered and experienced by subjects on different scales. ...
... Advancing a feminist theory of the late modernist state, Wendy Brown (1995) examines how gender marks state power. The masculine state described by Brown (1995) is diffuse, encountered and experienced by subjects on different scales. In deepening involvement with the government, women exchange dependency on individual men for regulation by contemporary institutions and processes of male domination (Brown, 1995, 173). ...
This chapter sets out the epistemological lenses and the central theoretical concepts guiding this research. Given the many theories and models regarding the intersection of gender and migration, it is important to highlight those that inspire this research and help to investigate and better understand how gender affects migration processes and, vice versa, how migration impacts gender relations. The first section of this chapter presents the main perspectives adopted here: feminist and constructivist epistemology. The next section discusses patterns of various migration trajectories. The third section gives a brief historical overview of the debate on gender in migration studies and clarifies the theorisation of gender and migration in this book. The analytical Chaps. 10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_4 , 10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_5 , 10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_6 and 10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_7 include other essential concepts and findings.
... Despite claims that sex purchase bans tackle demand and protect sex workers, evidence shows that this is not the case (Hardy and Sanders 2013). Wendy Brown's (1995) notion of 'ressentiment' warrants application here. Ressentiment comprises feminists' appeal to the state for redress for an injured identity, which it ends up re-inscribing rather than neutralising. ...
... Her analysis of the theoretical justifications for criminalisation-harm, deterrence and cost-benefit analysis-illuminates key issues that policymakers must consider when considering whether to (de)criminalise sex work. Throughout this article, we have argued that decriminalisation is the first necessary step in shifting from a politics of punishment based on injury or ressentiment (Brown 1995) towards a politics of prostitution based on social justice that can recognise and begin to redress (not consolidate) material inequalities via rights, recognition and representation (Fraser 2010). Finally, the point to be made is this: by linking two literatures, we attempt to move away from the abolition of prostitution to the abolition of criminal justice as the only viable form of intervention into prostitution (O'Neill and Laing 2018). ...
Leigh Goodmark's work on domestic violence argues for alternatives to criminal justice to 'solve' issues of gendered violence. The criminalisation of sex work and prostitution is rarely discussed in this context-a rather odd omission given the increasing trend towards 'criminalising demand' and counter-calls for decriminalisation in this domain. In this article, we bring the two debates into conversation, using Goodmark's work to bring analytical clarity to the prostitution debate and connect sex work to wider social justice debates in feminist anti-violence circles. We aim to move the conversation beyond retribution and the view that law is justice to outline a vision of justice for sex workers grounded in the principles of rights, recognition and representation. By contextualising the decriminalisation of prostitution within the framework of a wider anti-carceral justice movement, we seek to build alliances for social justice that transcend the current divide.
... 129-30). She argues that because the algorithms are 10 While complainants may lodge a complaint in the hope of making transparent an individual instance of discrimination, they rarely succeed in achieving this aim. Indeed, a lack of transparency is central to the favoured model of dispute resolution. ...
... Indeed, many complainants cannot afford representation at all and the evidence shows that unrepresented individuals do not fare at all well against corporate respondents, however worthy their claims. 10 Thus, while AD legislation might appear to be a form of social legislation that is distributive in orientation, it does not recognise a distributive pattern (Somek 2011, p. 17). The legislation purports to exhibit a special moral concern for the victims of discrimination and stereotyping, but the market context all too often skews the outcome against them. ...
Despite the rhetoric of equality that infuses anti-discrimination legislation, a close analysis reveals that it is in-equality that is invariably privileged. With reference to the Australian example, this introductory article will show how the paradox is played out at multiple sites in terms of both form and substance, such as through the individualism and confidentiality of the complaint-based mechanism. A striking exclusion from the legislation is the attribute of class, the most significant manifestation of social inequality, which remains ineffable even when it significantly shapes other attributes. The prevailing political backdrop of neoliberalism plays a significant role in promoting inequality through competition policy and profit maximisation. Powerful corporations not only endeavour to resist transparency, but they also tend to oppose proactive measures in favour of substantive equality. The contradictions of anti-discrimination legislation thereby sustain in-equality while simultaneously espousing the rhetoric of equality.
... An instance of such transmission is made possible through physical money. Thus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) proposes the shift to using digital money during business transactions whenever possible (Brown, 2020). ...
The coronavirus outbreak has necessitated physical distancing to be ruled out as a measure to control the virus transmission. The pandemic has also called forth an alternative among Malaysians to continue their livelihood, including opting for mobile wallets during routine business transactions. Despite the growing number reported during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 40% increase has yet to reach the optimum level of usage, indicating that mobile wallet use will remain relatively low. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate mobile wallet usage amidst the COVID-19 pandemic by using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The present research was conducted nationwide, involving a sample size of 452 who completed the distributed questionnaires. The analysis of data utilised the Smart Partial Least Square (SmartPLS). The results show a significant relationship between perceived usefulness and attitude towards mobile wallet usage. The respondents believe that using mobile wallets would be beneficial to them. In addition, perceived ease of use is also found to be significant, and the respondents believe that they do not require much effort to use a mobile wallet. The attitudes towards using mobile wallets have also observed a significant relationship with the intention of Malaysians to use them. For future research, it is recommended that the study is conducted with larger sample size and that the integration of a qualitative approach is considered to better understand the usage of mobile wallets in a similar context.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
Contemporary Western societies have accommodated relational rights of queer people, but the link between marriage and filiation rights remains strong. However, parallel to significant alternative family projects that emerged from Black and lesbian feminist studies, current possibilities of parenting enabled by intimate citizenship rights also present interesting practices of care outside the traditional family norm. Drawing on interviews with lesbian and bisexual mothers, and with trans people whose parents were part of their networks of care, this chapter analyses how parenting practices may be a tool to (1) ascribe social visibility to sexual and gender-diverse identities and families; (2) educate children beyond a gender binary system; (3) subvert the neoliberal supremacy of paid work over motherhood; and (4) raise children in a larger network of care, beyond the couple/children norm.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
Friendship can release intimacy from the normativity imposed by heteronormativity, monomaternalism and mononormativity. In the Mediterranean welfare regime, care is supposed to be granted by the family, and LGBTQ partners, mothers and friends are not legitimized in their desire to have more than one intimate relationship at a time, to parent and to live a satisfactory life beyond the couple. Therefore, through the subversive and transformative power of friendship, LGBTQ people question relational normativity, blur the boundaries of intimate relationships and redefine care. Taking into account the language used to make friendship intelligible in the neoliberalism, I describe these networks as “complicit”: they entail a multidimensionality of intimacy rooted in emotional and psychological assistance, companionship, pleasure, economic and material support, beauty and imagination.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
In this chapter meanings attached to monstrosity will be explored in light of queer critiques of the concept of citizenship. The first part of the chapter explores the notion of the monster, with a particular interest in queer readings of monstrosity. In that section, monsters will be unpacked against the backdrop of the archetype of the hero. Subsequently, the chapter focuses on the idea of citizenship and aims at recuperating its potential in the light of both contemporary queer critiques and evidence-based needs to strengthen formal recognition in times of anti-LGBTQI+ backlash. Finally, the notion of monstrous citizenship will be advanced as part of what I am suggesting be interpreted as an embodied turn in (queer) epistemologies.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
This essay offers a reading of the notion of public order from a biopolitical point of view. Departing from Giorgio Agamben’s reading of the state of exception, it will be argued that public order is the legal dispositive allowing for sovereign power to disseminate in a microphysical form throughout the judicial, administrative and securitarian institutions of the state. Moreover, in a similar vein that the state of exception constitutes, for Agamben, a threshold between the order of the law and the order of life, it will be shown that public order represents a fundamental core of Eurocentric regulations of the social life of kinship, gender, and reproduction. Finally, I will contrast the biopolitics of public order, understood as a preserving force for the status quo, with Foucault’s account of friendship, understood as an ever-emerging impulse for creative forms of radical cohabitation.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
Drawing on biographic interviews conducted with LGBTQ people based in Lisbon, this chapter unpacks the reasons why people cohabit with friends. The chapter starts with an introduction to the topic of friendship and how it has been historically constructed in Western societies. The second part draws attention to the empirical experience of living with friends. To understand why and how people manage cohabiting with friends, a focus will be placed on recent processes of gentrification and on the dynamics of care. Towards the end of the chapter, it will be suggested that houses designed to host nuclear families are heterotopic spaces where a variety of social practices occur.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
This chapter challenges mainstream friendship theory from philosophy and psychosocial studies that seems to suggest that at school friendship is based on hierarchized types of relationship. Drawing on data from parents of trans and gender-diverse children, this chapter demonstrates that friendship and friendship bonds cannot be universalized and that we must acknowledge the different desires, choices, and lived experiences through time and space, the roles, and the desires that are produced in an ongoing way within friendship relationships and that they are constantly moving. I argue that by looking at these friendship affects through a Deleuzian lens we are able to enunciate how friendships are, according to the parents, affective and becoming minoritarian and thus producing new ways to think about friends and friendship bonds.
... The imperative of personal responsibility slides ineluctably into that of family responsibility when it comes to managing the inevitable problems of economic dependence (the care of children, the disabled, the elderly, or the unwaged). (Cooper, 2017, p. 71) Family obligations, and the gender hierarchies upon which they are grounded, are at the same time naturalized and actively enforced, a combination that is constitutive of liberalism (Brown, 1995), taking specific forms in the neoliberal transformation of capitalism: Neoliberals (…) envisage the private paternalism of the family as a spontaneous source of welfare in the free-market order; a state of equilibrium that may be disturbed by the perverse incentives of redistributive welfare but also restored through the diminution of state paternalism (….) In the medium term, however, they readily acknowledge the reality of family failure (homologous to market failure) and the necessity of some kind of restorative intervention on the part of the state to correct such disorders. ...
The Introduction offers an overview of the main issues guiding the INTIMATE research project from which the book emerged. Three main themes constitute umbrella terms structuring the book: citizenship, care and choice. Each of these themes is discussed theoretically and in relation to LGBTQ+ intimacies. The last part of the Introduction outlines and summarizes each chapter.
... (Interview transcript) This kind of legal intervention is consciously used as a strategy that, in order to be effective, needs to be constantly placed in the broader political and social context. What is criticised as a problem with the judicial approachthe focus on an individual victim (Brown, 1995;Spade, 2015) or individual perpetrator (Blee, 2007;Freeman, 1995) -might be strategically turned into an advantage, when a particular political and social problem is effectively illustrated with individual cases. Thereby, structural problems are translated into stories with faces and names. ...
Based on interviews with legal practitioners working with or within anti-racist social justice movements in Sweden, we explore some dilemmas and paradoxes that appear when social movements pursue struggles for anti-racist social justice through the legal arena. How do the interviewees understand and critically relate to legal practices in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles? What are the conditions of engagement of these organisations in the legal arena and how do they impact social justice struggles in Sweden? What are the stakes in the legal practices of these movements? Rather than a strategically chosen tool for social justice, legal practice could be understood as a kind of self-defence, as resorting to law is often a response to an unjust legal system, oppressive treatment by the state or disadvantage and deprivation. The interviewees’ reflections on their legal practices are informed by a fundamental ambivalence between the ideological commitment in the critique of law and their position from which it is impossible to ignore the legal arena. Instead of taking a clear stance for or against the law as a tool for social justice struggles, we have attempted to understand what are the methods and the effects of legal practice that grow from this ambivalence. The accounts of our interviewees indicate that both practical strategies and ways of accounting for these aim at subverting and challenging the law while at the same time using it. Throughout the analysis we have conceptualised these strategies as decentring, re-politicising and redistribution.
... In other words, showing women as victims feeds into machismo culture (Arteaga- Barba et al., 2021). In the Latin American context, women may indeed be socialized with the "Marianist" ideal of submission and male dominance (Gherardi, 2016;Rondon, 2003;Smith et al., 2015;Walby et al., 2017); yet, as Brown (1995) and Marcus (1992) suggest, it would be empowering for women to see themselves as survivors. It is time to turn the tables on men and empower women. ...
This study considers the role that public service announcements (PSAs) play in addressing violence against women (VAW) in Latin America. Using content analysis, the study examines 407 PSAs about VAW from 20 Latin American countries. The results show that 62.3% of the PSAs encourage bystanders to denounce violence while portraying women as victims in 48.8% of the PSAs. However, 71.7% of PSAs did not include a helpline or how to report the crime, only 11.8% of the PSAs have non-narrative, or factual information, about VAW, and just 6.4% engage in compelling narrative messaging or storytelling.
... Trots den nästan oundvikliga benägenh ten att tala om staten som "den", så är inte den domän vi kallar för staten en sak, ett system eller ett subjekt utan en i högsta grad obunden plats som präglas av makt och tekniker, en samling diskurser, regler och praktiker som samspelar i begränsan de, spänningsfyllda och ofta motsägelse fulla relationer. 74 Brown menar att statens sätt att avsvära sig ansvar, inte minst i globaliseringens namn, samtidigt som det är tydligt att dess dimensioner av makt fortfarande är tydliga, blir en paradoxal strategi för att bibehålla en stark men allt mer kom plex maktposition. Hon hävdar vidare att staten inte bara förhåller sig till olika ak törer utan producerar "state subjects", i en dominerande byråkratisk diskurs som bygger på rationalitet. ...
This article analyses the relationship between how politics is organised and the potential for politicising gender, and discusses how feminist theory of the state could be used in order to understand this relationship. Regional policy, and especially regional partnerships as an established way of doing politics at the regional level, is used as an example of new forms of organising politics. Constructions of gender equality in regional policy is scrutinised as a way of analysing how gender is (or is not) politicised in this policy field. As a theoretical backdrop the definition of politics is elaborated as an ongoing process where the dimension of conflict is necessary and where place is seen as constituted through power. The author argues that new, seemingly inclusive, ways of organising politics also could work in an excluding manner. Further the author shows how demands for including gender equality doesn’t go further than the ambition of ”balancing in” women. Thus gender is not made into a political dimension. These processes are framed within a theoretical understanding of changes in politics from “government” to “governance” in a neo-liberal political culture, and analysed with post-structural feminist theorising of the state emphasising the need of seeing the state as complex, while still having privileges as a political actor.
... More contemporarily, the use of emergency powers has also been studied from a neoliberal standpoint. For example, Brown (1995) argues that social interventions are forms of state surveillance for managing welfare recipients' lives and activities. Similarly, Klein (2007) found that emergency discourse has been a relevant tool for Bretton Woods institutions' interventions in the developing world for implementing neoliberal policies as an economic "shock doctrine". ...
Emergencies/exceptions are presumed to be disruptive events which are inherently dangerous to the normal workings of a nation-state. Declarations of emergency by governments of all types around the world to deal with a variety of crises have prompted Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben to characterize them as “the dominant paradigm of government” (2005. State of Exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). This paper explores the Jamaican government’s penchant for using emergency powers to curb high homicide rates. During 2017–2020, Jamaica has declared and operated several States of Emergencies (SOEs) and Zones of Special Operations (ZOSOs) to address what are usually considered ordinary criminal justice matters. In this paper, I argue that the resulting anomalies, such as arbitrary plus extended detentions and internal extraordinary renditions, have placed Jamaica in a quasi-permanent “state of exception” in which the constitutional rights of some citizens have been compromised in the name of state security. This paper contributes to the growing literature on how blurry the lines between norm and emergency/exception have become across different global jurisdictions.
... From the perspectives of both citizenship and education, these theories provide novel critical angles or alternatives to accounts that take rational autonomy to be the key to 'the good life,' such as those of traditional humanism and liberal individualism. Accounts based on rational autonomy have been criticised from various perspectives, ranging from feminist philosophy (Brown, 1995) to therapeutic psychology (Smail, 2005). The key new materialist thinker discussed in this chapter is Rosi Braidotti, whose 'vital materialism' turns the focus from the autonomous individual to the essential relationality of all human and non-human co-habitants. ...
This chapter provides an interpretation of Balibar’s concept of citizenship introduced in his major philosophical works Citizenship (2015) and Equaliberty: political essays (2014). It is an effort to bring up a positive shape of citizenship out of Balibar’s philosophy even though it resists a positive conceptualization as a critique. This chapter departs from the meaning of negativity and antinomy in Balibar’s oeuvres, continues via interpretation of historical events which have shaped citizenship in Balibar’s perspective, and finally results in a positive assumption about citizenship defined as a form of historical practice which opposes the institutionalized realms in order to install an equal community in changing historical conditions. Balibar’s reflections on citizenship occur especially in relation to a universal community, an envisaged aim of modernity and a condition of possibility of a contemporary globalized world.
... From the perspectives of both citizenship and education, these theories provide novel critical angles or alternatives to accounts that take rational autonomy to be the key to 'the good life,' such as those of traditional humanism and liberal individualism. Accounts based on rational autonomy have been criticised from various perspectives, ranging from feminist philosophy (Brown, 1995) to therapeutic psychology (Smail, 2005). The key new materialist thinker discussed in this chapter is Rosi Braidotti, whose 'vital materialism' turns the focus from the autonomous individual to the essential relationality of all human and non-human co-habitants. ...
This chapter contributes to the debates concerning contextualized conceptualizations of citizenship. Based on the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, it offers a definition of citizenship as constructed in everyday communities in the course of taking care of shared issues. Further, it examines the habits of citizenship that are both acquired and reformulated in the processes of participation in these communities. The empirical example of villages in Kondoa District, Tanzania illustrates the diverse communities in which inhabitants participate, and the kinds of habits acquired. Six types of communities, the village community, cultural groups, religious groups, self-help groups, economic groups and civil society organizations’ groups were identified. Further, six categories of citizenship habits emerged including political citizenship, engaging citizenship, economic citizenship, cultural citizenship, responsible citizenship and moral citizenship.
... From the perspectives of both citizenship and education, these theories provide novel critical angles or alternatives to accounts that take rational autonomy to be the key to 'the good life,' such as those of traditional humanism and liberal individualism. Accounts based on rational autonomy have been criticised from various perspectives, ranging from feminist philosophy (Brown, 1995) to therapeutic psychology (Smail, 2005). The key new materialist thinker discussed in this chapter is Rosi Braidotti, whose 'vital materialism' turns the focus from the autonomous individual to the essential relationality of all human and non-human co-habitants. ...
In this chapter, we offer a background to the edited volume, the research project that produced it and its content—a series of investigations of the contested notions of citizenship and learning, and their interconnections. We set the agenda for exploring citizenship and learning as defined in philosophical traditions, and as experienced and described in selected locations in Tanzania and Uganda, and also introduce the contributions from the perspectives of both citizenship and conceptualizing learning.
... From the perspectives of both citizenship and education, these theories provide novel critical angles or alternatives to accounts that take rational autonomy to be the key to 'the good life,' such as those of traditional humanism and liberal individualism. Accounts based on rational autonomy have been criticised from various perspectives, ranging from feminist philosophy (Brown, 1995) to therapeutic psychology (Smail, 2005). The key new materialist thinker discussed in this chapter is Rosi Braidotti, whose 'vital materialism' turns the focus from the autonomous individual to the essential relationality of all human and non-human co-habitants. ...
This chapter conceptualizes self-help groups as communities of practice where learning citizenship practices experienced. Qualitative research through interviews and focus group discussions was employed for data collection in Mpwapwa District, Rural Tanzania. Drawing on (Lave and Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , Cambridge University Press, 1991) notion of situated learning through legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, I analyze how participants describe their learning, and how they draw connections between being a good member in a group and exercising good citizenship more broadly. Findings show that participants learn to achieve main goal of development and care for others in various ways including participation in joint activities, imitating others and trial and error. A good member of the group is perceived as a good citizen, responsible in development of oneself and to others. Therefore, groups address challenges in their settings and portray a kind of citizenship that needs attention in development interventions.
... al (2021) mencionan que las candidaturas indígenas del 2020 también señalaron que el aspecto económico resulta un factor sumamente importante que repercute en su desempeño electoral. Ello permite establecer a esta categoría como otra de las variables que causan diferencias sociales y que amplía las dimensiones de la interseccionalidad clásica basada solo en la raza, sexo, género y sexualidad (Brown, 1995). ...
La democracia inclusiva se ve afectada en contextos donde proliferan barreras estructurales que limitan el acceso a la participación y representación de grupos en particular, en este caso: mujeres indígenas. Desde la interseccionalidad, la participación efectiva en los diversos ámbitos de representación se encuentra expuesta a obstáculos como las desigualdades socioeconómicas, discriminación y acoso que condicionan el desarrollo político de la mujer indígena.
A partir del análisis de la I Encuesta Nacional a Candidaturas Congresales en 2020, se busca mostrar el estado de participación de las mujeres peruanas, considerando que las identidades étnicas pueden significar barreras adicionales para ejercer plenamente sus derechos políticos en procesos electorales, en donde una de cada tres candidatas mujeres de este estudio se autoidentificó como indígena.
... Wendy Brown (1995) has criticised situations in which, when protecting so-called vulnerable groups (e.g., women or native populations), the state legitimises its legal intervention by transforming real harm (and a sense of woundedness) into a sense of an identity that can be manipulated in exclusionary terms. Brown has highlighted that people placed in vulnerable conditions need power to be shared and not only to be regulated on the basis of protection. ...
Approximately 80,000 Moroccan men fought on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War. When the colonial wars ended, those men were recruited from very poor villages (some of them at the age of 16). Although the core collective memory that remains about those Moroccan troops (‘the Regulars’) concerns absolute cruelty, particularly towards women, they also form part of the history of the Spanish colonisation. During the Civil War, Franco’s General Queipo de Llano promised that the ‘castrated’ Republican soldiers’ women would know about the ‘virility’ of those Moroccan troops. Departing from fragmented historical data, this contribution presents a brief critical victimological analysis of grey zones and ‘Janus’ characters to better understand the complexities of victim and victimiser that overlap in the contexts of victimhood, accountability, colonisation, war and violence against women.
... Or, la fragilisation des catégories de personnes appartenant aux minorités par l'effet de l'ultra compétitivité inhérente à la logique néolibérale, peut conduire à engendrer du ressentiment. En ce sens, Wendy Bron souligne que « les caractéristiques de la société laïque moderne tardive, dans laquelle les individus sont secoués et contrôlés par des configurations globales de pouvoir disciplinaire et capitaliste aux proportions extraordinaires, et s'arc-boutent en même temps nus, dépourvus de tout répit et responsables d'eux-mêmes, s'ajoutent à une incitation au ressentiment 93 . » Et l'auteur continue : « le libéralisme contient dès son origine une incitation généralisée à ce que Nietzsche appelle le ressentiment, la vengeance moralisatrice des impuissants, 'le triomphe du faible en tant que faible' 94 ». ...
... In its manifold ways of manifesting itself, pain is not only physical and individual, but also complex and social. It inhabits the individual body while also encompassing social and political lives, and the ways through which we acknowledge and attribute importance to pain and suffering, argue Harper et al. (2015, 10) based on Brown's (1995) work, can be a 'constitutive feature of modern political and social life'. For instance, it was precisely a multifaceted understanding of pain that inspired the hospice movement and enabled the emergence of palliative care as a discipline. ...
By portraying the circumstances of people living with chronic conditions in radically different contexts, from Alzheimer’s patients in the UK to homeless people with psychiatric disorders in India, Managing Chronicity in Unequal States offers glimpses of what dealing with medically complex conditions in stratified societies means. While in some places the state regulates and intrudes on the most intimate aspects of chronic living, in others it is utterly and criminally absent. Either way, it is a present/absent actor that deeply conditions people’s opportunities and strategies of care.
This book explores how individuals, groups and communities navigate uncertain and unequal healthcare systems, in which inherent moral judgements on human worth have long-lasting effects on people’s wellbeing. This is key reading for anyone wishing to deconstruct the issues at stake when analysing how care and chronicity are entangled with multiple institutional, economic, and other circumstantial factors. How people access the available informal and formal resources as well as how they react to official diagnoses and decisions are important facets of the management of chronicity.
In the arena of care, people with chronic conditions find themselves negotiating restrictions and handling issues of power and (inter)dependency in relationships of inequality and proximity. This is particularly relevant in current times, when care has given in to the lure of the market, and the possibility of living a long and fulfilling life has been drastically reduced, transformed into a ‘reward’ for the few who have been deemed worthy of it.
... Muslims are burdened with a tremendous challenge to adjust to the new environment and overcome negative images of their religiosity and stereotypes against their culture that are already embedded in mainstream secular society. Similar to what the political philosopher Wendy Brown (1995) had detected, the "well-intentioned liberal policy to accommodate and integrate Muslims into the mainstream secular society added the level of incommensurability that Muslims have to deal with, putting them in an increasingly precarious position in the Canadian polity. The policy reproduced the same asymmetrical relations that it initially sought to solve: inequality. ...
This paper analyzes the hardening religious difference in contemporary Canadian society and explains why the presence of Muslims, including new converts, constantly incites in the public imagination the primordial threat of Islam to the secular accomplishments of Canadian society. Relying on the available data and previous research on the historical formation of the secular in Canada, the author attempts to detect a paradox within the state-lead politics of recognition that unintentionally creates the conditions for new communal conflicts” (warna kuning) diubah menjadi “Relying on the available data and previous research on the historical formation of the secular in Canada, the author attempts to detect a paradox within the statelead politics of recognition that unintentionally creates the conditions for new communal conflicts. By using an inductive generalization, the author argues that the perceived incompatibility between Islam and secular values is derived not so much from cultural and theological differences or actual political threats posed by Muslims or Indigenous converts. It instead emanates from the self-understanding of the majority of Canadians that defined the nation as essentially Christians and simultaneously secular.
... Se problematiza cuando la lógica de derechos opera desde un marco liberal propio de las culturas capitalistas en los discursos sobre inclusión, inidividualizando los problemas sociales, estableciendo comprensiones deshistorizadas que reifican la diada víctima/victimario. Esto provoca que no sea posible reconocer la existencia del daño si no existe un agente, un individuo culpable, por ejemplo, de discriminación, a lo cual se suma la necesidad de comprobar intencionalidad del daño, lo cual suele ser difícil y engorroso (Brown, 1995;Spade, 2015). El trabajo de Mohanty (1990) ha sido clave en desmontar esta individualización de estos abordajes: plantea que esto ha redundado en estrategias de sensibilización y reducción de prejuicios dirigidos a estudiantes y profesores/as, sin tomar en consideración las formas históricas e institucionales de estas formas de dominación, priorizando descargas emocionales en vez de la promoción de una acción política. ...
Durante los últimos años se ha incrementado la visibilización de personas y colectivos LGTB+ en el ámbito educacional en Chile. Las demandas relacionadas con diversidad sexual se suelen articular en torno a la idea de inclusión de estudiantes LGTB+. En este artículo analizamos discursos y prácticas sobre inclusión LGTB+ en el sistema educacional público chileno, a partir de entrevistas individuales y grupales realizadas entre los años 2018 y 2019 con personas interventoras y usuarias en las regiones de Santiago, Valparaíso y Concepción. Nuestro objetivo es problematizar ciertos usos liberales de la inclusión y sus efectos negativos a la hora de afirmar y apoyar efectivamente a las diversidades y disidencias sexuales. Los principales resultados del análisis de discurso de las entrevistas se presentan en cuatro ejes: tensiones en la implementación de prácticas educativas de inclusión; pánicos morales y fijaciones heterocisnormativas; intervenciones identitarias y reduccionistas; y, desestabilización de las fronteras desde los activismos LGTB+.
... Siehe zur Problematisierung des dadurch perpetuierten OpferstatusBrown (1995).K ...
Identity politics is subject to similar critiques in contemporary public debate and political theory. A central topos of this critique is that identity politics is essentializing: it fixes subjects to their social position and resorts to a politics of particularity that leads to divisions in national citizenship and democratic discourse (the communitarian and liberal position) and to divisions within social movements (the critical position). Contrary to this one-sided critique, we propose a different interpretation with the concept of “constructivist identity politics.” We show that political identities are not essentialistically given, but emerge from processes of social and political construction; that they are actively produced, learned, and practiced by political (sub)cultures and movements. In these processes of construction, political articulation and agency are produced, enabling subjects to critique relations of domination and discrimination. Following radical democratic theory, we argue that the particular political perspectives of identity politics thus enabled do not endanger democracy or solidarity in social movements, but contribute to their further democratization by actualizing the universal principles of democracy in particular disputes. While the construction processes of identity politics tend to essentialize and produce exclusions, critical reflection on such tendencies is also inherent to identity politics. This understanding also enables a critique of such identity politics that is not oriented towards the democratic values of equality and freedom and blocks critical self-reflection. After an overview of contemporary identity politics critique, we elaborate this constructivist understanding following debates in feminist and postcolonial theory since the 1980s. Building on this, we systematically develop the notion of constructivist identity politics by differentiating three aspects of it: subjectification, articulation, and representation. We refer to approaches by Foucault, Rancière, Laclau/Mouffe, and Hall and illustrate the respective aspects through examples of migrant self-organizations as well as gay culture and queer critique.
... 1 See Butler (1997) and Brown (1995), for example. 2 See Leeb (2018a) for a brief elaboration of this problem in political theory. 3 Refer to Schaap (2001) for a sophisticated assessment of Arendt's conception of guilt and its relation to political action. ...
This article draws out a critical, yet under-appreciated political theme in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics , namely his emphasis on guilt and atonement. First, the article assesses how Adorno’s Marxism allows him to think justice and guilt beyond the familiar legalistic frame. Second, the article reconstructs Adorno’s treatment of guilt as a distinctly political capacity to imagine one’s boundedness and indebtedness to others, and the affective engine enabling us to engage in a political ethic distinct from familiar categories of reparation. Third, the article shows how the themes of guilt and atonement give us a more complete picture of Negative Dialectics . This inquiry also intervenes in contemporary debates regarding the political status and emancipatory potential latent within guilt-feelings, and claims Adorno gives us a path forward to imagine the relation between guilt and politics in a novel way.
... For instance, the ban of and police violence against the participants of the 2005 Poznan March of Equality resulted in a number of street events for LGBT rights in Poland (Gruszczynska, 2009). Brown's (1995) concept of "wounded attachments" suits well to describe the impact of state repression on LGBT activism here. State repression-that is, politicized segregation from an imagined ideal that forms wounded attachments-might facilitate mobilization of LGBT people who would claim inclusion and equal rights. ...
This article examines the impact of external and internal state policies on Russian LGBT activism. Drawing on the political opportunity structure (POS) framework, it focuses on the analysis of two factors (the level of state repression on LGBT people and the direction of state foreign policy) and their impact on LGBT activism. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s goal for closer relations with the West facilitated the decrease of pressure on LGBT people. That created positive conditions for LGBT activism. Since the late 1990s, however, Russia’s direction in foreign policy has become more assertive. That has facilitated the increase in state repression on LGBT people and activists. Such negative changes in POS have posed challenges for LGBT activism complicating its further development.
This paper explores the feminist themes present in Margaret Atwood's seminal novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," and analyzes their resonance with contemporary political and social issues. The aims of this study are to understand how Atwood's depiction of a dystopian society highlights the suppression of women's rights, autonomy, and agency and to elucidate the relevance of these themes to the current socio-political landscape. This qualitative study aims to explore the feminist themes in Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," and examine their relevance to current political and social issues. To achieve this, a multi-step approach will be adopted. The method employed involves a comprehensive analysis of the novel, encompassing close reading and critical examination of key passages. The results of this study reveal that "The Handmaid's Tale" intricately explores themes of gender inequality, reproductive rights, and the patriarchal control exerted over women's bodies. Atwood's dystopian society of Gilead serves as a stark warning of the potential consequences of eroding women's rights and dismantling feminist progress. The analysis also illustrates the novel's relevance to contemporary issues, such as the ongoing struggle for reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and women's representation in politics and leadership roles. In the discussion section, the findings are further examined in light of present-day political and social challenges faced by women around the world. Utilizing the critical feminist dystopia concept, the paper explores the parallels between Gilead's oppressive regime and the actual threats to gender equality and women's rights in various societies. Moreover, the analysis highlights how "The Handmaid's Tale" serves as a poignant critique of patriarchal structures and a call to action for addressing systemic gender disparities. The conclusion of this study emphasizes the enduring significance of "The Handmaid's Tale" as a powerful feminist work, reflecting the resilience of patriarchal forces and the need for continued activism to safeguard women's rights. Atwood's narrative serves as both a cautionary tale and a source of inspiration, urging readers to remain vigilant in defending women's agency, autonomy, and equality. Ultimately, this research reaffirms the timelessness of feminist literature and its vital role in fostering awareness and mobilizing societal change.
My book makes the case for confrontational and thoughtful modes of political engagement. I draw on a variety of authors including Machiavelli, Douglass, Kant, Arendt, Du Bois, Freire and Anzaldua to advance my argument.
In this article, we dwell in the affective history of queer family and the family from which queers and trans people are potentially ousted in order to consider how family photography can be a psychic and social strategy of survival, but also a material archive of minoritized history. We engage with the photography exhibition Queering Family Photography. Drawing from psychoanalytic and queer theories of kinship, we propose that the family continues to be a site of ambivalence for LGBTQ2+ studies because it is a technology of nation building, but also a site of creative belonging for people expelled from the natal home. The exhibition helps to unearth structures of feeling that are made of and from queer kinship.
This article explores how notions of conservative populism animate Turkish foreign policy. It explicates the construction of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ in conservative populism and how it became the dominant or hegemonic discourse of the AKP regime. While demonstrating various aspects of the peculiar conservative populism, the paper will try to point out the specific governmental ethos that conservative populism generates in the case of the AKP. By emphasizing how conservative populism is intermingled with Turkish-Islamist ideology, the paper explores the background of the AKP’s pro-active and assertive foreign policy as well as the devastating effects of the de-institutionalization of the bureaucratic state structure and decision-making mechanisms.
In an era when the right to health has refashioned global health policymaking, how has global health addressed LGBT health disparities? To identify the ways in which institutional and epistemological apparatuses of global health policymaking have made LGBT health concerns “scientifically” ignorable, this chapter begins with an analysis of a related debate at the World Health Organization (WHO) that took place between 2013 and 2016, when the issue was “closeted” again. Reviewing this debate and drawing on the interactions between international organizations and queer activists in Asia enables us to critically understand state-centered LGBT health politics. Queer activists from this region have been concerned about representation issues related to LGBT health issues – either being underrepresented or being overexposed by mainstream media and national policies.
This chapter considers such ambivalence toward “global healthification,” to extend Meyer and Schwartz’s concerns about the public healthification of social injustice issues. Reframing discrimination and marginalization against LGBT people as a public/global health issue is potentially helpful to draw the attention of scientific and epidemiological researchers; it may also harm queer people at the local level due to the power to define diseases and determine control measures held in the hands of the states. Through presenting the ambivalence toward the global healthifying of social injustices against LGBT people, this chapter argues that global health policy studies should broaden the understanding of the social and political determinants of health and recognize sexual and gender diversity as a precondition of global health justice.
Concerns about devaluation and misrecognition are central for understanding the experiences of workers in stigmatised occupations. Yet contemporary approaches have been criticised for over-simplifying workers’ responses to mis/recognition. Povinelli’s concepts of ‘trembling of recognition’ and ‘social tense’ offer a useful starting point for extending existing understandings of mis/recognition by highlighting the contextual importance of temporality. To explore these ideas, we report on an ethnographic study of waste management workers in London, UK. The findings suggest that dirty workers’ responses to mis/recognition are a complex mix of discordant cognitive and affective reactions and narrative strategies, shaped by changing normative ideals. The findings suggest that recognition derives not only from workers’ encounters, meanings and feelings attached to the past and present but also from the sense that they have a valued part to play in the future.
In this article, we provide a theoretical discussion of ressentiment within the emerging fields of the political sociology and political psychology of emotions and offer an empirical investigation of its political-cultural function. The complex emotion of ressentiment refers to a recurrent rumination on negative feelings and an affective compensation for life failures. Extant studies show ressentiment can be linked to electoral support for populist, anti-immigration and far-right parties, and can provide leverage for major sociopolitical upheavals. Using the World Values Survey 7th wave dataset for Greece we analyse the psychological components and political expressions of ressentiment testing three hypotheses on its relationship with efficacy and life satisfaction, value systems and political violence. The analysis is possible due to an original sixitem ressentiment scale that we offer as a novel measure of this emotional phenomenon. We find a limited distribution of ressentiment in Greece concentrated among economically and socially disadvantaged segments of society. We also find that ressentiment scores link monotonically with overall life dissatisfaction and diminished political interest, lack of efficacy, low interpersonal trust and aversion for sociocentric and emancipative values. Traces of dormant support for violence are evident in responses about violence against others where ressentiment -ful participants score higher compared with their less ressentiment -ful counterparts. We discuss the implications of our findings for the quality of democracy, authoritarian populism and nationalism.
In England and Wales, Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) examine domestic abuse-related deaths to identify lessons to be learned. However, their emergence as a policy initiative has been little considered. To address this gap, a thematic discourse analysis of policy documents to 2011 was undertaken, examining the justification for, and conceptualization of, DHRs before their implementation. It is argued that DHRs were constructed as a taken-for-granted good, through which multi-agency partners would generate learning while the (gendered) subject was silenced. Attending to aspirations, contradictions, and tensions in the emergence of DHRs has implications for their understanding and operationalization in the present.
This thesis is an ethnographic study of ‘Heimat’ (home) in a Bavarian village, and how Heimat is made in relationship with the German nation-state, the Catholic church, and the experience of nature. At a time when the village has lost its previous political and economic significance, local efforts to make Heimat have become vital to regenerate the village community. Major economic and political changes since World War II have led to substantial changes in the village, especially the decline of ‘big families’ and rise of local associations (Vereine) as the main organisational force. Against this historical backdrop, local identities emerge in the tensions and entanglements between state formation and local practice. The political reality of Heimat is defined by the ways in which villagers reveal and bridge oppositions between official and vernacular discourses. Aside from government and state, Catholicism also plays an indispensable role in articulating senses of community in Heimat. The ethics and organisational forms of the Catholic Church offer alternative ideals and institutions to secular ones; they can also provide connections between state and village. Furthermore, villagers’ experience of Heimat at present are crucially expressed in the local idea of ‘returning to nature to heal society’s illnesses.’ This local idiom incorporates contradictory characteristics, as a metaphor of villagers’ investments in and hopes for Heimat itself, and with exclusionist connotations. Nature in this sense is both a source of morality for a society deemed lacking and ultimately beyond human morality, for only nature that is essentially different from human society has the power to heal. The unreachability of this idea of nature is its very strength. Heimat, similarly, operates based on a core paradox: to maintain Heimat, villagers tend to externalise the inherent problems of Heimat to an imagined opposition between the ‘traditional village’ (as Heimat) and the ‘modern city’ (as its ultimate ‘other’, with ethnic diversity). But an analysis of the local dialectical understandings of modern time and the corresponding meanings of Heimat reveal that Heimat is essentially a product of modernity.
The Reader Collective Memory-Work is meant to foster further exchange about Collective Memory-Work, its use and usefulness, methodological questions, aspects of its adaptation/s, critical elements found in CMW, exemplary applications in various fields of practice and research.
Included in the Reader are: first-time English translations of texts by the groups involved in the Frauenformen projects with Frigga Haug; reprints of chapters on Collective Memory-Work that are helpful to understand trajectories of its development and adaptations; contributions about connections and perspectives for applications of Collective Memory-Work and discussions of method and methodology.
Originally, Polanyi’s notion of countermovement has been conceived as an impulse to protect the social from the market’s reign. But when the social itself is seen as unevenly embedded, I argue, countermovements can well emerge to escape the protection’s clutches. This is what happened in the Yugoslav car factory Zastava, whose workers partially supported work commodification in the 1980s. Acting in a system that blended social status and de facto wage labour, workers translated the socialist ethos of productivity into a plea for market-run, bureaucracy-free jobs. Such dialectic shows us that work and freedom continuously morph as not only economic, but meaning-making activities set in a historical process. Liberalization occurs from the possibilities already existing in the old order, combining institutional reforms from 'above' and popular demands from 'below', voicing the resentments of those who are already exposed to the commodification of their work.
The sovereign credit ratings issued by the ‘Big Three’ credit rating agencies (CRAs) – Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s, and Fitch – significantly influence how emerging market governments structure their economies. This is despite several rating failures that have cast doubt on the accuracy and transparency of ratings and revealed problems such as conflict of interest in the business model of CRAs. Existing critiques about the political economy of sovereign credit ratings, however, fail to explain how their authority remains intact amidst these contestations. This thesis shows how the authoritative agency of CRAs and sovereign credit ratings are produced by an epistemic culture that places a high value on numerical data as a transparent reflection of reality and therefore the most rational basis for decision making. While acknowledging that ratings can be improved, the assumption is that under certain conditions, CRAs can unearth the objective ‘truth’ about a government’s fiscal profligacy. This thesis reveals the historical, discursive, and geopolitical framework that informs this assumption and how it fits into global power relationships. As such, the thesis shows how modern credit arrangements are embedded in long-term colonial histories and the continued relevance of these histories in the reproduction of the global political economy.
The goal is to re-politicise the discourse of sovereign credit ratings by exposing the historical ambiguities, ideological contestations, and methodological compromises that underpin their production. This analysis is divided into two themes. The first two chapters of this project examine the historical processes through which financial markets and the economy became de-politicised, and conceived as a natural, self-regulatory mechanism that can be scientifically ‘known’ and the macro-economic policies this assumption made possible. The two chapters after that reveal the myriad subjective assessments, political considerations, and methodological compromises that go into the production of ratings. These include deciding what type of data to collect, model specifications, as well as how to interpret flawed or missing data.
The final two chapters of this thesis consider how sovereign credit ratings are entangled in the political economy of South Africa. These chapters reveal the post-colonial nature of modern financial markets by showing how South Africa’s political economy has profoundly been shaped by colonial regimes of power and knowledge. Sovereign credit ratings are entangled in the reproduction of these power structures in two ways. First, the assessment of creditworthiness necessitates a forgetting of not only these violent histories and how they have come to shape asymmetrical power relations around the globe, but also their own complicity in the reproduction of these hierarchies. Secondly, their authoritative position in financial markets contributes significantly to the normalisation and sedimentation of macroeconomic policies which similarly require a ‘forgetting’ of these histories by disciplining unorthodox fiscal and monetary measures to address them. By exposing the political processes inherent in ratings, this thesis emphasises the necessity of broadening their content to enable modalities of economic policy making that aligns with the social welfare and democratic needs of society.
Keywords: sovereign credit ratings, global South, South Africa, governmentality, post-colonial finance
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