"Everyone with Eyes Can See the Problem": Moral Citizens and the Space of Irish Nationhood

This paper examines Ireland's 2004 Constitutional Amendment which removes birthright citizenship from any future Irish‐born children of immigrant parents. I argue that for particular historical reasons, the ability of the state to convince its citizens of the necessity for this Amendment was remarkable and I suggest that it was able to do so by constructing citizenship as a moral regime and foreign‐nationals and their foetuses as ‘suspect patriots.’ I describe how the notion of immorality is laminated upon black bodies — specifically black pregnant women — and how the presence of black migrant workers, refugees and asylees consequently comes to be experienced in Irish national space as transgressive, their political subjecthood constrained by the supposedly legible abjectivity of their bodies. The issue of race remains unenunciated, and yet, as the Minister for Justice stated during the referendum debate, ‘anyone with eyes can see the problem.’ The Irish government's privileging of moral rather than cultural incommensurability is strikingly similar to culturalist rhetorics of exclusion that are often invoked when race is at issue in European public debate on immigration. Configured upon, and therefore experienced as a type of body, immorality becomes an alibi for race and is naturalized as a form of exclusion and as a potential site of state intervention in the form of xenophobic legislation and policymaking. Reading this decision as merely racist however, fails to give voice to the experiences of Irish Citizens who voted for this Amendment. Their struggle to build a “New Ireland” and to accept a multiculturalist framework in the face of neo‐liberal restructuring policies and a European‐wide retreat from the welfare state must be considered as being in dialectical tension with the ideological smearing of immigrants if we are to fully grasp the complex interaction between relations of power and the privileging of difference.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

Decency and the Liberal International (Dis)Order: Moral Limits and the Possibilities of a Global Pluralist Politics

This article analyzes the tension between the liberal ideals of freedom and equality and cultural difference. It argues that decency has become intertwined with the fragility of the liberal international order by providing a problematic threshold of international justice. The idea is that as global pressures mount for protecting the human dignity of persons/peoples, they also congeal or harden decency’s political and social constraints (impartiality, neutrality, and basic rights enforcement) on engaging others. Decency as a moral threshold of international justice, the article claims, has become static or a self-reinforcing limitation. This contradictory decency/dignity dynamic of the liberal international order not only explains how states have aggressively asserted their interests by absorbing these constraints, but also how politics can limit the pragmatic potential to bridge the various social gaps in values and belief systems. This article seeks to conceptualize a pluralist ethos that shows how such constraints can be reimagined as, or turned into, the conditions of possibility/freedom that transition us to a global pluralist politics. It concludes with a discussion of the refugee crisis and Islamism, showing how both cases resonate the felt stigmatization and alienation within the liberal international order.     

UNRAVELING RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEWS: The Relationship between Images of God and Political Ideology in a Cross‐Cultural Analysis

Not only do few studies address the issue of how religious belief relates to political ideology, but little attempt has also been made to analyze this relationship from a comparative perspective. Using data from the International Social Survey Program, we examine how images of God, as measured by God's perceived level of engagement and authority, relate to political ideology in seven Western industrial and postindustrial societies. We find that variation in images of God has no effect on whether individuals are politically liberal or conservative in five of seven countries. Nonetheless, beliefs about God are strongly related to abortion and sexual morality attitudes in every country, but only sporadically related to ideas about social and economic justice. In the end, we argue that theological beliefs tend to be unrelated to a general measure of political ideology, not because religious beliefs are politically unimportant in these societies, but rather because religious perspectives are rarely fully liberal or conservative in their political orientation. In addition, we find that Americans hold unique views of God in comparison to other countries in our sample and that the American tendency to view God as more active and authoritative affects policy attitudes in ways contrary to the effects of church attendance.     

Think rich,feel hurt: the critique of capitalism and the production of affect in the making of financial subjects in South Korea

This article describes the process of financial subjectification by observing a private educational programme on financial self-management in South Korea. ‘Wealth-tech’ is a popular Korean term that refers to techniques of personal finance and money-management. Ethnographic research on a private educational programme on the subject of wealth-tech brings to light justifying mechanisms of financial investments and moral foundations for the pursuit of wealth whereby laypeople’s engagement with, and attachment to, financial markets are (re-)vitalized. In particular, this study highlights the role of critiques about capitalism as well as the production of affect in the making of financial subjects. By re-appropriating critiques of capitalism and employing therapeutic narratives, the wealth-tech pedagogy redefines financial investment as an act of resistance against the ills of capitalism and foreign capital. Moreover, this case study shows that wealth-tech is legitimized not solely by risk calculations per se, but also by feelings of hurt. Participants tend to transform themselves into active wealth-tech practitioners by cultivating the kind of affect that I call here ‘thinking rich, feeling hurt’. Therefore, the financial subjects configured in this wealth-tech pedagogy are those who feel hurt, and in this emotive state are led to think from the perspective of the rich. Moreover, they are configured not only as self-governing individuals but also as collective beings who resist foreign capital through their own engagement with financial markets. In this process of financial subjectification, the beliefs that finance can make them rich become consolidated. By illustrating these Korean experiences, this article calls attention to critical and affective practices in the process of financial subjectification, in particular those that take shape at the encounter between market rationality and ordinary experiences, memories, and feelings whereby laypeople translate discourses and techniques of financial capitalism into their own values and judgments.     

A state of limbo: the politics of waiting in neo‐liberal Latvia

This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post‐Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo‐liberal governmental technology and its application in post‐socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state‐run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between ‘neo‐liberal’ and ‘Soviet’ regimes, we should understand the double‐move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo‐liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo‐liberalism.     

Muslim Women,Moral Visions: Globalization and Gender Controversies in Indonesia

Since 1998, Indonesia’s democratization has produced contentious public debates, many of which revolve around issues of gender and sexual morality. Yet such controversies not only often focus on women, but also involve women as participants. This article examines how Muslim women activists in two organizations adapt global discourses to participate in important public sphere debates about pornography and polygamy. Indonesia’s moral debates demonstrate an important way in which global discourses are negotiated in national settings. In the debates, some pious women use discourses of feminism and liberal Islam to argue for women’s equality, while others use Islam to call for greater moral regulation of society. My research demonstrates that global discourses of feminism and Islamic revivalism are mediated through national organizations which shape women’s political activism and channel it in different directions. Women’s political subjectivities are thus shaped through their involvement in national organizations that structure the ways they engage with global discourses. The Indonesian case shows not only that the national should not be conflated with the local, but also demonstrates the significance of national contexts and histories for understanding global processes.     

Der Spagat zwischen Ehrenamt und Dienstleistung

The already existing social political debate about a new culture of citizenship engagement has reached the internal live of traditional independent social care associations. Their specificity is, among others, that, they are not only voluntary organisations based on moral values, but also that they have developed into services companies with a staff of over one million regular employees.     

Are They Not Worthy? How Partisan Political Blogs Legitimize the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street

Social movements struggle to gain acceptance as legitimate actors so that they can raise money, recruit members, and convince politicians to meet their demands. We know little, however, about how this legitimacy is granted by various political authorities, in part because legitimacy is often poorly operationalized. To operationalize legitimacy, I revise Charles Tilly's ( 1999 ) classic concept of WUNC displays (i.e., public presentations of worthiness, unity, numbers, commitment) to assess how political authorities legitimize social movements. I analyze original data on the coverage the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street received from 20 elite political blogs during a critical event early in each movement's development. I find that liberal and conservative blogs both use the same aspects of worthiness (and not unity, numbers, or commitment) to endorse their preferred movement but different aspects of unworthiness to denounce the movement they opposed. Conservative outlets were more partisan on both accounts. This suggests that these blogs' shared status as distinctly partisan political outsiders produces a similar, but not identical, relationship with social movements. While both sets of blogs legitimize and delegitimize a movement based on its specific strengths and weaknesses, conservative blogs act more as a partisan bullhorn and liberal blogs act more as a forum for debate.     

Virtue and the material culture of the nineteenth century: the debate over the mass marketplace in France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution

This article treats the intellectual problem of revolution, agency, and the advent of liberal democracy from the standpoint of mid-nineteenth century France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. After a discussion of the theoretical and historiographical problem??in particular the relevance for this period in history of science studies??the article discusses the views of former Saint-Simonian and political economist, Michel Chevalier, eventually turning to the debate over the free market of goods and labor between the early French socialist Louis Blanc and Chevalier in Chevalier??s new role of liberal free trade activist who trumpeted the ideology of the mass marketplace. Chevalier??s engagement of the social question turned on a distinctively moral, ideological, and, ultimately, technocratic defense of the free market??this free market utopianism became both starker and more ideologically refined as a result of Chevalier??s engagement with Blanc, especially in regard to worker-education. Both referred to the new mass marketplace of cheap, retail goods created by the rapid advance of mass transport, modern logistics, as le bon marché. French political economists went so far as to invoke a new way of life: la vie a bon marché (literally, ??life on the cheap??). This notion of work and life was opposed by Blanc on the grounds of fraternal social solidarity. Finally, and potently, the moral virtues of the free market were conceived by Chevalier as a direct answer to social revolution, a means for affording social stability.     

From philosophy of history to political philosophy: an ideological investigation of globalization

Many have argued that one of the reasons for the irresistible trend of liberal democracy is the irreversible process of globalization. The logic assumes that globalization is not only an inseparable prerequisite for promoting economic development but also the dynamic to transform political structures into liberalism in less democratic countries, because economic development within countries creates new middle classes around the world, with their natural demands for more participation in decision and political pluralism. In other words, all societies will evolve to a point where they will adopt liberal democratic institutions. In turn, the resulting new world order will be characterized by international cooperation through market economies and liberal democracy. This paper investigates the ideological origin of globalization by inspecting Fukuyama's theory of the ‘end of history’. It argues that this belief is a continuance of modernization theory and reminiscent of functionalist concepts by Western scholars concerning the development of less developed countries. The difference is that globalizers cleverly cover their ethnocentrism with Hegel's philosophy, as it implies that the Western system is some perfect theory that all people will eventually accept as their cultures and societies evolve into a Western superior state.     

The Problem With Paul: Seeds of the Culture Wars and the Dilemma for Journalists

The Apostle Paul was a person of many contradictions. Amid his revolutionary exhortations that the genuine Christian must ignore external religious law and look within for spiritual direction, Paul also laid out explicit guidelines for accepted Christian belief that have been used to establish Christian orthodoxy, punish heretics, and lay the foundation for church authority. For journalists trying to negotiate their way through the hostilities of the Christian right, the liberal left, and the polarization of American cultural and political life, there is no better historical source than Paul to understand how Christianity can be interpreted so differently by people of divergent political, social, and moral views. Journalists cannot expect to understand the dissension among conservative and liberal Christians, as well as the broader divisions between Christians and non-Christians, without examining Paul as a major source of the double-mindedness that characterizes Christianity's outlook on the questions of modern life.     

The Polish Social Enterprise Sector Vis-à-Vis the Welfare Regime: Following on the Solidarity Movement?

This paper presents the development of the enterprise sector and the welfare regime in Poland, dominated by two opposing trends originating from the country’s recent history: remnants of the “Communist welfare state” and liberal tendencies that came after the political and economic transformation in 1989. The growing civil society that supplements a deficient welfare system finds its roots in the peaceful underground Solidarity movement of the 1980s which played a great role in liberating Poland. After the political turnover, the Solidarity’s mission-driven approach not only survived, but also helped shape Poland’s contemporary civil society. The outlined mechanisms seem to be significant for understanding the transformation of social economy and the welfare state concept in post-communist Europe. In our paper, we identify six mechanisms underlying the Solidarity movement, which, when subsequently implemented by social entrepreneurs, has guaranteed the success of their organizations. We will also characterize the current welfare state in Poland, as well as the role of social enterprises in filling the gaps and addressing the shortcomings of the welfare state. Several case studies will illustrate the latter.     

Philosophy and profound disability: learning from experience

Reflection on profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities raises a series of questions in moral and political philosophy, a claim supported by philosophical argument but also given credence by human testimony, some examples of which are presented here. I introduce three young people with profound learning disabilities, before presenting testimony on their behalf, organised so as to coincide with a series of related philosophical questions about human dignity, respect, citizenship and dependency. I suggest that there are implications that apply to all people and not only to those with profound learning difficulties.     

Through the Looking-glass: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind

Abstract Notwithstanding Gramsci or Foucault, there remains a tendency, in historical sociology, to explain processes of domination in terms of political and economic forces. In the study of state formation and imperialism, realpolitik is given precedence over ritual, material factors over the moral suasion of the sign. Yet European colonialism was also a cultural project. In Southern Africa, nonconformist missions, the vanguards of empire, conjured up new maps, new systems of relations, new notions of time, production and personhood. From their very first encounters with native communities, it is argued, they sowed the state of colonialism on which the colonial state - and a more enduring condition of dependency - was founded.
About sunset the king, attended by his brothers and a few more persons, came to our tent…I said that I had brought a small present for him, as a token of friendship—while opening it he remained silent, not moving even his head, only his eyes towards the parcel. I then took from it a gilded copper comb and put it into his hair, and tied a silver spangled band and tassel round his head, and a chain about his neck, and last of all presented him with a looking glass…     

State‐led transnationalism and migration: reaching out to the Argentine community in Spain

Abstract This article focuses on when and how states develop transnational policies. It presents a case study of a relatively small emigrant community, whose departure was not simply caused by poverty or crisis, but most recently by an economic and political debacle that questioned people's values and expectations. I focus on the state side of the equation and identify a shift in Argentina's policy after 2003, though also show how such policies came out of a long history of state intervention in population and migration and are now related to human rights concerns and the unfinished process of democratic consolidation. I argue that the state initiates political transnationalism, not migrants, and highlight the importance of some relatively unexplored factors in the understanding of the motivation, intensity and impact of the state's involvement, such as the characteristics of the emigrant community, the existence of specific political projects, the role of some domestic actors and processes, and the nature of international agreements.     

The Return of the Market?: Reflections on the Real "Conservative Tradition" in U.S. Policy Discourse

This article examines the ideological continuity underlying recent changes in U.S. policy, arguing that both the "liberal" policies of the 1960s and the "free market" conservatism of the 1980s were based upon the presuppositions of neoclassical economic theory. I first consider the intellectual assumptions of postwar liberalism, emphasizing the degree to which the dominant paradigm of the period accepted the neoclassical framework. Next I examine the conservative neoclassical critique of liberal ideas that developed in the 1970s. The economic upheavals of that decade demonstrated the limits of a postwar liberalism that was only ambiguously committed to state intervention. The result was the reassertion of a more consistent market model in economic policy discourse. I conclude by considering the ideological effects of the dominant neoclassical paradigm today in directing attention away from crucial social problems, particularly those that result from market forces themselves in a rapidly changing global economy.     

The Political Lives of Girls

Girls are increasingly being publically celebrated as community leaders, models for ideal citizenship, and central to economic development. Contemporary girlhood is rich with political implications and significance. In this essay, I outline some of the scholarship on the public discourses that idealize girls as model neoliberal citizens and address important findings and contributions from empirical research on the political lives of girls: girls' political beliefs, political socialization, political identities, and their practices of political and civic engagement. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests that studying the political lives of girls enables and requires a re‐thinking of some key concepts in political sociology, including the meaning of politics, of engagement, and of citizenship for different populations.