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Discipline and Punish
In urban informal settlements, the state's material presence is often thought to be marginal or even absent. However, the state can be very much present in different forms even when its material presence might be seemingly absent. Examining the ways governing rationalities of the state may circulate and get reproduced in spaces of informality can thus offer a nuanced understanding of how the informal is governed in the everyday at the urban grassroots. Using Foucauldian notions of governmentality as an analytical lens, this paper examines the governing rationalities and subjectivities of urban citizenship that residents of an informal settlement reproduce in their everyday expressions and spatial practices of self and neighbourhood management. Drawing on empirical data from ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka, the paper reveals how by reproducing the logics of the state at the urban grassroots, the settlement residents in effect reproduce state control within conditions of informality.
Previous comparative research has revealed recent high and rising school exclusion rates in England and a contrasting picture of much lower and reducing rates in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.In this paper, we examine findings from new research into school exclusion policies across the four countries of the UK. This interrogates for the first time how the problem of ‘school exclusion’ is framed within these four distinct policy contexts. We take up the question of how policy levers and drivers may shape patterns and trends in permanent exclusion and suspension/temporary exclusion. This analysis reveals that, despite broad agreement in policy on a need to reduce exclusion and increase equity across the UK jurisdictions, there are diverging policy stances on the purposes of exclusion, responsibilities of schools and the role of the state overall in bringing about change. We conclude that deeper critical engagement with policy contexts is a vital element in understanding the persistence of school exclusion itself but also the differential rates of exclusion across the UK
Architecture embodies symbolic meanings evolving across shifting socio-political landscapes. This paper investigates the multivalent transformations of Singapore's iconic colonial landmark the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall (VTCH). Tracing VTCH's metamorphosing roles, functions, and identities through historical ruptures like British rule, Japanese occupation, decolonization, and nation-building, it illuminates how the complex underwent profound changes. The analysis underscores how regimes continually reimagined this architectural palimpsest to forge national narratives, consolidate collective memories, and materialize power relations. VTCH's transition from colonial edifice to a symbolically imbued site mirrors the intricate interplay between built environments and Singapore's spatial politics. Once symbols of colonial dominance, the buildings later embodied sovereign nationhood and nostalgic roots. Notably, VTCH recently assumed new roles driving cultural tourism and economic growth. Through a diachronic interrogation of this singular icon, the paper elucidates broader dialectics between decolonization, nation-building, and the semiotics of heritage in (re)constructing collective identities. It offers insights into how societies redefine spatial legacies to serve evolving ideological imperatives and identity discourses. Integrating the micro-architectural and macro-national enriches understandings of the mutually constitutive relationships between the built environment, political authority and national consciousness. ARTICLE HISTORY
ABSTRACT
In addition to the genocidal actions taking place in Gaza, the Israeli military also
conducts large-scale assaults in the West Bank that destroy individuals’ homes
and communities, and invades Palestinian homes one home and garden at a
time. While there are 250 of these invasions per month, they receive little
scrutiny. Most of these invasions occur across the 19 refugee camps in the
occupied Palestinian territories, where home is viewed as a gendered and
temporal space: transient, penetrable, and violable. To analyze home invasion
through a feminist lens, interviews were conducted with ten womenidentifying
refugees who described it as one of many forms of collective
punishment that Palestinians experience that determines ability or debility as
well as who may live and who may/must die. Interview participants saw
home invasion as a type of domestic, gendered, and sexual violence that
affects neighbors, kin, and communities and is mitigated through the
collective support of women. Work on this article started well before
the devastating and horrific events that unfolded after October 7, 2023. The
article’s scrutiny of the militarized infrastructure across the West Bank brings
important context to the state violence in Gaza, and lays bare the
vulnerabilities of the West Bank.
Academisation of schooling in England is a significant development with consequences for the disavowal of the role of community and democracy in education at the local level and wider resonance for geo-policy jurisdictions where neoliberal education reforms play out. This study analyses the operation of power and control of Multi Academy Trust (MAT) boards and the apparent diminution of local oversight and accountability, the bedrock of an inclusive, democratic polity. The explanatory and conceptual contribution made to understandings of the phenomenon of MATs is seen in the problematising of academisation and MAT formation as a technology for the operation of power, foreclosing democratic community engagement with their local schools. This has implications for the vitality of a democratic polity. Yet, more optimistically, generative possibilities of a renaissance of schools’ relations with their communities and reinvigoration of the public realm are envisioned as restorative of local democratic engagement in school governance.
This article compares Heidegger and Foucault on modern technology, taking its clue from Agamben’s claim that Gestell and dispositifare ‘perfectly corresponding’ concepts. So far, however, the task of a detailed comparison of Gestell and dispositif remains unresolved. At first glance, the two terms appear compatible, designating how we moderns began objectifying nature as well as ourselves as manipulatable raw material. Significant for the discussion is Heidegger’s and Foucault’s contrasting readings of Nietzsche, i.e. as the ‘lastmetaphysician’ versus ‘the first genealogist’. Schematically, for Heidegger, modern technology figures as humanity’s nearly inescapable condition, whereas Foucault sees it is ‘functionally indeterminant’, evolving in multiple, intersecting, and unexpected ways.
The notion of 'sexual justice' has gained traction in academic and policy arenas in recent years. This paper presents a scoping literature review of the regimes of truth, following Foucault, of 'sexual justice' appearing in the scientific literature from 2012 to 2022. Thirty-eight papers were coded using (1) content analysis of the studies' central problematics, the programmes referred to, and institutional location(s); and (2) thematic analysis of how the notion was deployed. Central problematics centred on (1) critiques of, or alternatives to, dominant approaches to sexual and reproductive health; and (2) highlighting injustices. As such, 'sexual justice' is fighting for legitimacy in the truth stakes. There is a distinct paucity of papers tackling the translation of 'sexual justice' into practice. South Africa dominates as the site in which papers on 'sexual justice' have been produced, but there is a lack of South-South collaboration. Two themes were apparent around which conceptions of sexual justice cohere. Firstly, sexual justice is seen as a vital, yet politically ambivalent goal, with neoliberal co-optation of progressive rights agendas being warned against. Secondly, sexual justice is viewed as a means, in which sexual justice is described as having potential to repair established frameworks' shortcomings and oppressive legacies.
This article applies a governmentality perspective to approach education for sustainability. First, we outline governmentality through a Foucauldian lens and consider the emergence of environmentality in Italian education. Next, we analyse education for sustainability teaching and learning dynamics. Focusing on a pedagogic intervention carried out in a hotel-management vocational high school, we explore how school programming, classroom interactions, teachers, and environmental experts conceptualise food sustainability, influencing the pupils' view. Precisely, by analysing the ‘From farm to fork' programme – the empirical case study we have investigated – three pedagogic processes are detected: ‘framing', ‘politicising', and ‘normalising'. Our argument is that they work in tandem to problematise the socio-ecological implications of eating consumption choices and to guide students towards the neoliberal solution of sustainability. Implications of this research discuss how neoliberalism influences pedagogic activities, especially as it relates to establishing environmentally responsible action and shaping the ethics of the sustainable citizen.
This article critically examines selected Malayalam films about transgender people, for their depiction of transphobia, and the representational politics in visualising violence against trans characters on screen. Transphobia is expressed through negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards trans people or transness which include fear, aversion, and hatred, and it usually leads to violence. Trans people experience various forms of violence; verbal, physical, and sexual violence from society due to their gender nonconformity. In Kerala, though the state acclaims itself as progressive through solidarities extended by the government and various community-based organizations, activists, and allies, transgender people continue to receive negative responses and violence in the public sphere. In the selected films, transfeminine people are depicted as quiet and helpless in resisting violence, as they are lynched and disrobed in public places by mobs. Whereas, the trans man in a film resists sexual violence and cinema typecasts the courage for it stems from the underpinned masculinity of the character. The article uses visual and thematic analysis of seven films released from 2005 to 2018 in the Malayalam industry and observes that cinema fetiches the body of the trans character as ‘unnatural’ and violates their dignity through molestation, and public lynching.
Keywords: Kerala, Malayalam Cinema, Transgender People, Transphobia, Violence, Visuals.
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