The political is the personal: women’s participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

This article examines women’s lived experiences as new activists in social movements. Taiwanese women – many of them housewives – joined the Sunflower Movement, a large-scale protest against a trade pact with China, and a related anti-nuclear movement in 2014. This study demonstrates how new women activists’ everyday political practices mutually construct the public and private spheres in the Taiwanese context. By ‘making private public’, these new activists use discourses of citizenship and maternalism to connect politics to social issues and daily life. Public participation makes these women feel empowered, and their daily actions transform politics from a set of formal, institutionalized practices to a practical fact of everyday life. This research also challenges the reproduction of a rigid private/public division in previous feminist scholarship that regards family and childcare as a separate realm that hinders women’s public participation. In a marked break from past accounts, these women don’t separate their caring responsibilities from their political actions. By focusing on new activists’ political action in and through their family and childcare, this research calls into question scholarly discussions that view maternalism primarily as a public discourse for mobilizing women or a visual strategy for collective protest. By considering the disruptive potential of all acts of mothering, this study paints a more complex and nuanced picture of women and mothers as protesters and reveals how activist women’s actions in the family and private social networks can be a central part of maternalist strategies’ radical potential.     

社交网络时代大学生政治参与及引导机制研究

社交网络时代,网络成为大学生政治参与的新载体,大学生通过社交网络参与政治社会生活积极性高,原因在于:通过网络参与的及时性;同辈交流自由化,长幼交流隐私化;接受信息私己性与自我满足性。因此,可构建大学生网络政治参与引导互动模型,包含动力机制、协调机制、导向机制、效能机制以及交互机制等内容。     

Interregionalism in Transnational Interest Networks: Euro-Asian Civil Society and the EU–ASEAN Free Trade Agreement

The study of interest groups is still a relatively small field of political science. The process of globalization has brought about the evolution of interest networks from national organizations to regional and transnational networks. This article uses the modes of political participation framework created by Jayasuriya and Rodan, in order to study the created spaces used by public interest networks at an interregional level. The empirical case study relates to Asia-Europe Meeting: the Europe-Asian interregional institution, and the work of public interest networks stemming from the civil society organizations that shadow it in opposing the EU–Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) free trade agreement (FTA). We find that the ‘modes of political participation’ model explains quite accurately the political spaces created by civil society in the EU–ASEAN FTA. We extend the framework by adding a fifth space, lobbying, which appears out of isomorphism. This concept represents the adoption by organizations of practices carried by other institutions they interact with. In this case, public interest networks have adopted the practice of directly influencing policy-makers that was the prerogative of private interest groups.     

Connected political consumers: transforming personalized politics among youth into broader repertoires of action

This study explores political consumerism motivations in an effort to understand the complex ways in which this lifestyle practice fits into the broader participation repertoires of young citizens. We begin by outlining the psychological motivations for political consumerism, and theorize how they might orient political consumers toward (and away from) online expressive, political, and civic participation. In particular, we examine how the desire to gratify distinct psychological needs shapes navigation of the digital media environment in search of information and connection, and how this, in turn, shapes participation. Results of a national survey of young adults show that value-expressive, social-identification, and social-approval motivations for green living relate differently to participation, and that online community embeddedness mediates these relationships. The findings suggest that connecting to likeminded others via digitally-enabled communities can transform individual concerns into collective concerns, and extend participation from the private spheres of everyday life into the public sphere.     

Muslim Political Activism or Political Activism by Muslims? Secular and Religious Identities Amongst Muslim Arab Activists in the United States and United Kingdom

Scholarship on Muslim political mobilisation in the West has developed as an important counterpoint to public discourse, which has tended to cast Muslims as a threat to social cohesion, liberal democracy, and national security. But even as scholarly literature has shed light on civic participation among Muslims, it has sidelined the diversity of political identities and values that motivate them. Most, if not all, Muslims in the West find their identities politicised in some way, but the question of whether this leads to a consensus amongst Muslims about the role of religion in public life often remains unexamined. In this article we draw on interviews with seventy-eight activists in Britain and the United States who are both Muslim and Arab to complicate ideas about the political mobilisation of Muslims in the West. Respondents, we show, are far from unified in their views on religion as a basis for political action and mobilisation. Some are keen to place Islam squarely in mainstream political spaces; most, however, are insistent that Islam should remain a private faith and identity and that political mobilisation should take place under the aegis of Arabness or other ‘secular’ identities. Using theoretical perspectives on the public sphere, we explain the complexity of our respondents' political identities and activism. Our overall aim is to broaden perspectives on the ways in which people from Muslim backgrounds participate in public, political life in Western contexts.     

Art for Whose Sake?

In a wide ranging article the author considers the nature of poetry and the political agendas of literature generally in order to dispel The myth of the personal versus the political, which has been particularly prevalent in the disability arts debate. He examines some of the statements made about disability art in the disability press, questioning on the way assumptions about the existence of a so-called disability culture. He promotes a role for the poet, particularly the poet of a minority group, as witness to the oppression generated by a dominant language-constructed culture, Concluding that there is no longer the need for a conflict between the role of writer/artist and political activist in their movement towards the political liberation of disabled people.     

Community orientation of services for persons with a psychiatric disability. Comparison between Estonia,Hungary and the Netherlands

This article explores the way mental health services and social services are orientated on assisting people with a psychiatric disability to participate in different areas of community life. A large research project about community participation in three different countries (Estonia, Hungary and the Netherlands) confirms the findings of other studies that – regardless of geographical location – people with a psychiatric disability have difficulty fulfilling social roles in the community. They are often faced with fewer opportunities than other citizens, due to their health problems, stigma, discrimination and poverty [World Health Organisation. (2011). World report on disability. Geneva: WHO]. An important objective of social work is to help people find their way in society. Surprisingly enough, in all three countries, most social workers are mainly focused on solving individual problems, and not on community participation. Shifting the focus starts by having a clear awareness of the notion of community participation. Social workers have to work both on supporting individuals to find their way in the community (individual support), and on supporting social networks in the community to accommodate persons with a disability on the basis of equal and valued citizenship (community support).     

De-publicized secularization and contemporary Chinese mass culture

This article attempts to distinguish two kinds of secularization and mass culture in contemporary China by creatively deploying Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas and other western thinkers’ theories of secularization and modernity. It argues that, in the 1980s, China underwent a first process of secularization: that was characterized by liberating a secular society from the quasi-religious totalitarianism of the Cultural Revolution through the re-establishment of a civic society, which integrated individualism and publicness, with awareness of individual rights and rights for participation. The participation of new and self-disciplined rational individuals, who were concerned with pubic interests and issues. This essay takes Teresea Teng's popular songs as an important example of this first kind of secularization, as an attempt to demonstrate how the mass culture of the 1980s actively contributed to the construction of this new publicness. Since the 1990s, however, another kind of secularization emerged, one that did not care about the public world and others, but instead about material enjoyment and intimate private matters. Different from the religious path, this represents a way of abandoning the public world: it takes the form of a retreat into bodily/physiological happiness and one's secluded private world, leading to the development of a morbid narcissistic personality. This essay argues that these two kinds of secularization are the foundation and the starting point for us to understand the political effects of two kinds of mass culture.     

A note on separability and intra-household resource allocation in a collective household model

This paper shows that it is possible to track the changes in the distribution of power within a couple by focusing on the changes in the pattern of private consumption when the consumption decisions are efficient and private consumption is separable from public consumption in individual preferences. We first show that the separability of private consumption from public consumption at the individual level carries over to the household level. Hence, changes in public consumption only matters through a change in the residual budget available for private consumption. When the consumption decisions within the household is efficient, private consumption decisions can be modeled as the solution of a problem consisting in maximizing a weighted sum of the private-consumption sub-utility functions of the spouses under the residual budget, the weights being unique and representing the distribution of power over the allocation of private consumption. The model presented in this paper can be used to analyze the changes in the household resource allocation due to, for example, childbirth.     

残疾污名的研究进展与展望

残疾污名是针对残疾人负面的刻板印象而引发的偏见和歧视,其消极影响渗透残疾人个人生活和社会参与的诸多方面。现有研究对其成因的解释越来越注重社会文化背景因素。公众污名和自我感知污名是污名测量的主要内容,使用的方法以外显态度测量和内隐社会认知方法为主。当下残疾污名干预的研究主要围绕增加群际接触来改变公众对残疾群体的偏见,采用积极心理干预改变个体自我认知,通过融合教育塑造包容、共享的社会文化三个方面来进行。未来研究可以围绕污名影响的保护机制、残疾人内化污名的差异、残疾污名测量的优化、污名干预效果的评估及干预方式的改进等方面进行。     

Public Spheres of Social Stratification

Abstract  The story of Class was ended. This is the end of the conceptualization of class as a historical and political agent, whereas stratification as a hierarchy for individual achievement still exists. The death of class means a liberation of social thoughts from the inclination to justify violence, oppression, or even genocide for the sake of history and justice. At the same time, however, it eliminates one major public framework on which we may formulate and think about public goods. Liberal egalitarian moral philosophies by Rawls, Dworkin or Sen have emerged just at around the time when the story of class was approaching an end. They substituted the old socialistic egalitarianism and were intended to establish a new public sphere of social stratification. However, Rawls' and Dworkin's theories are foundationalistic and timeless, and hence destined to failure. This paper presents a provisional scheme for public philosophy of social stratification, by which social stratification is ethically interrogated and given a chance to produce public values.     

Issue Conclusion: Sociology,Political Inequality,and Democracy Beyond 2020

The articles in this special issue all contribute to a broader and richer understanding of racial and gender politics. They help reveal how racialized and gendered barriers to political participation reflect and reproduce intersecting racialized and gendered systems of domination. In doing so, they provide insights that can be applied to uncover political processes, cultivate political praxis, and draw our awareness to empowering modes of social and political transformation. Given all this, I propose a renewed sociology of political inequality that focuses on advancing democracy. This agenda includes (1) emphasizing the state of democracy over the state of political party competition, (2) highlighting how democratizing social change happens at various levels, (3) developing and practicing empirically grounded public advocacy, (4) seeing social and political structures are interconnected, and (5) employing sociology in the service of democracy.     

Families with Children with Disabilities - Inequalities and the Social Model

This article suggests that families with children with disabilities experience a range of inequalities that families with children without disabilities do not suffer. It draws on a recent qualitative study to illustrate the way in which it is not just disabled people, but in the case of disabled children, whole families that suffer from unequal opportunities and outcomes. We draw on the social model of disability to show that the lives of these families are often characterised by financial hardship, stress and anxiety as a result of social barriers, prejudices and poorly conceived service provision. The social model of disability is usually drawn upon to illustrate the way in which social organisation disables people with impairments. In this instance, we illustrate the way in which social organisation disables not just the family member who has an impairment but the whole family unit. By applying this model of disability, new ways of creating practices and policies for these families can be developed which incorporate their views into the heart of the policy-making process.     

The Politics of Disability: A New Approach

This paper will argue that the politics of disability has, so far, been narrowly conceived as part of the processes of party and pressure group activity. These approaches will be examined critically and it will be suggested that they are unlikely to produce substantial political gains in terms of ensuring the full participation of disabled people in society or contribute significantly to improving the quality of their lives. Finally, it will be argued that the politics of disability can only be properly understood as part of the newly emergent social movements of all kinds and it is only within this context that their real significance can be grasped.     

Applying the social model in practice: some lessons from countryside recreation

This paper draws on the researcher's experiences as a countryside access advisor in exploring some of the ways that social model ideas can influence the development of organizational policy and practice in mainstream settings. It argues that, in seeking to influence the development of more inclusive policies and practices, disability studies needs to look for new ways of engaging with diverse audiences of practitioners who are used to operating within an individual model of disability, and who may therefore see no immediate organizational advantages to adopting social model principles in their work. This evolutionary process demands in particular that we work constantly towards finding new, more accessible, ways of explaining social model ideas to mainstream audiences. Thus, in a social climate that continues to tolerate disabled people's oppression, disability studies has a key role to play in demonstrating to theorists, policy-makers and practitioners why and how social model ideas can support the move towards inclusion.     

Financing reform for long-term care: strategies for public and private long-term care insurance

The way the nation provides for the financing and delivery of long-term care is badly in need of reform. The principal options for change are private insurance, altering Medicaid, and public long-term care insurance. This article uses the Brookings-ICF Long-Term Care Financing Model to evaluate each of these options in terms of affordability, distribution of benefits, and ability to reduce catastrophic out-of-pocket costs. So long as private insurance is aimed at the elderly, its market penetration and ability to finance long-term care will remain severely limited. Affordability is a major problem. Selling to younger persons could solve the affordability problem, but marketing is extremely difficult. Liberalizing Medicaid could help solve the problems of long-term care, but there is little public support for means-tested programs. Finally, universalistic public insurance programs do well in meeting the goals of long-term care reform, but all social insurance programs are expensive and seem politically infeasible in the current political environment.     

Disability discrimination in South Korea: routine and everyday aggressions toward disabled people

In the past, the type of discrimination against persons with disabilities in South Korea was seen mainly as being related to the physical environment and social systems that ignored disability. However, the emergence of social model and anti-discrimination laws established in numerous countries has rapidly expanded the scope of social participation for persons with disabilities as well as their awareness of their rights. This article posits that a type of disability discrimination that could emerge in the future is microaggression, which can appear in diverse forms in newly formed human relationships as the scope of social participation increases.     

Elite athletes or superstars? Media representation of para-athletes at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games

This article offers a discourse analysis of media representations of para-athletes before, during and post the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games in print and online sources, drawing on the lens of critical disability theory. We consider the importance of the media–sport cultural complex in influencing public attitudes towards disability. We conclude that whilst the importance of discursive change cannot be underestimated at the level of the media agenda, change at the level of lived experience will only flow from carefully designed and executed political and policy initiatives rather than directly from changes in the media presentation or visibility of individual athletes.     

DOES ANTIREGIME ACTION UNDER COMMUNIST RULE AFFECT POLITICAL PROTEST AFTER THE FALL?

This article addresses the effects of political protest at a certain time on the actors' protest at a later time. I argue that if there is an effect it is indirect: political protest leads to a change in certain variables that affect participation at a later time. In a first step, these variables are specified, based on previous research. It is assumed that public goods preferences (i.e., political, economic, social discontent, and political alienation), weighted by perceived personal influence, a felt obligation to protest, and integration into protest-promoting networks are the major causes for participation in political protest. In a next step, I propose a theory specifying the effects of protest participation on these variables. The hypotheses are tested by panel data collected in Leipzig (East Germany) referring to the situations of 1989 and 1993. The most important results are that participation in antiregime action in 1989 led to political, social, and economic satisfaction and increased perceived political influence in 1993. There were no effects of participation in the protests in 1989 on accepting felt obligations to protest and on integration into protest-promoting networks in 1993.