Terror as potentiality – the affective rhythms of the political

ABSTRACT

The paper addresses the ways in which the cultural, the affective and the political intersect, counter and/or feed upon one another in the context of contemporary terror. Initially, building upon Machiavelli and Hobbes, we deal with the political significance of terror (and the fear it provokes), emphasizing its potentiality, which inscribes future within the present. Then we turn to an analysis of terror in the prism of securitization. Terror, in this respect, amounts to de-materialization (the enemy as spectre), de-temporalization (the erasure of the temporal difference between the present and the future), and de-territorialisation the breakdown of the distinctions between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Following this, we observe how these three processes are dealt with at the subjective and objective (social) levels. Regarding the first, subjective, level we differentiate three attitudes as paranoid, panic and rational. Regarding the latter, we consider terror in terms of accident, risk and catastrophe. Then, discussing the rhythmic relations between these conceptualizations and their spatio-temporal consequences, we focus on the notion of catastrophe. We end with articulating the aporias emerging in this context     

Twenty years of heritage studies – the showbiz of history?

This paper is part of a collective retrospective convened in 2014 looking back at various disciplines in the Humanities at Wits over the 20 years of democracy. The seeds of the heritage studies programme at Wits were sown in 1990 when it became apparent that the apartheid regime was about to cede to a more democratic regime, creating a new opportunity for Wits academics to engage with public institutions. The paper discusses this moment against the background of the History Workshop at Wits, which hosted some of the discussions about public culture in the early 1990s. It attempts to elucidate the origins of the heritage studies programme at the university and describe some of its features. The paper follows the migration of the programme from Social Sciences to the Wits School of Arts, outlining some of the philosophical ramifications of its relocation.     

A Statistical Profile of the Irish Community in Gateshead – The Evidence of the 1851 Census

By the mid-nineteenth century, the north east of England was home to the fourth largest Irish settlement in England. The 1851 census makes it possible to identify key features of this post-famine community and provides a basis for the exploration of non-quantitative sources. The Gateshead Irish community was the third largest in the north east, behind Newcastle and Sunderland. The census data can establish such key features as the spatial distribution of the Gateshead Irish, their occupational profile, age distribution, household size, marital status and the extent of intermarriage between the Irish and the host community. It will be shown that the concept of the ghetto does not apply to the Irish; that they were overwhelmingly employed in unskilled work; that they were, in general, older than the host community; and that there were a significant number of cases of intermarriage between the Irish and English.     

The eligibility question – the real source of depersonalisation?

There have been a number of high-profile strategies over recent decades to raise social care above what is widely regarded as an unacceptable service in the United Kingdom. Quite apart from all too frequent high-profile scandals, it is seen as a service that is depersonalising and stigmatising. None of the strategies to bring about change, most of them introduced to great fanfares, have delivered the changes they promised. This article sets out a view that the reason why they have all failed is that none of them have identified or therefore tackled the underlying problem, which is the relationship between needs and resources. Underfunding has long been a serious concern for campaigning organisations. The article does not detract from that contention. However, it sets out how strategies to manage the gap between needs and resources, more than the funding gap per se, are themselves the root cause of depersonalised and chronically impoverished services. The unlikely source of these strategies can be traced to the unintended consequences of an Act of Parliament that had the best of intentions.     

Issues of Motivation – Vassa/Equiano and Carretta's Critique of the Evidence

This article offers an analysis of the written record of an oral statement of grievances delivered in 1798 by George II, king and principal chief of the Afro-Indian Miskitu nation, before Antonio de Echeverría, the senior officer in command of the small Spanish settlement of Río Tinto. Containing 44 articles and extending over four days, George's protest is used here as a lens through which to examine the ways in which the Miskitu exploited their occupation of a strategically vital borderland between British and Spanish empires in Central America and the Caribbean to protect their autonomy, and extract advantage from the Europeans who competed for their loyalty. In discussing the wider context and the circumstances that gave rise to the 1798 events from an indigenous perspective, it also throws new light on the processes and experiences that entangled Britons, Spaniards and Miskitu over the decades from the 1770s to 1800.     

Carriers of the troublesome violence – the social services’ support for female victims of domestic violence

In Sweden, the social services’ responsibility for abused women has been reinforced and clarified on several occasions since the 1990s. At the same time, the knowledge of their work is undeveloped. This article analyses the social services’ support for female victims of domestic violence with a focus on organisation, based on the concepts of specialisation and specialists. The study consists of qualitative interviews with 16 social workers in 11 municipalities. The study shows great organisational variation between the municipalities, although most have some sort of specialised units or person-bound specialisation. Colleagues, training and external supervision are factors the social workers emphasise as important in working with female victims of violence, a social problem described as both special and difficult. The different forms of organisation and specialisation influence the support the social services offer abused women.     

Why the Danes Got There First – A Trans-Imperial Study of the Abolition of the Danish Slave Trade in 1792

This article explores the causes and timing of the abolition of the Danish slave trade in 1792. While the existing historiography highlights economic and humanitarian considerations behind the decision to decree abolition of the slave trade and situates such concerns within a Danish context, this article looks at ways in which trans-imperial influences on the Danish government and commercial ties between the Danish colonial empire and other slave trading polities were equally important factors in the move towards abolition.     

Jews in the News – Representations of Judaism and the Jewish Minority in the Norwegian Contemporary Press

This article provides an analysis of how Jewish rituals and Jews as a minority group are represented and debated in the Norwegian press: How is “news about the Jews” framed by the media? Which discourses dominate the debates? Are notions of what it “takes to be Norwegian” put forward in these cases? The article is also an analysis of Jewish voices in the press, and based on the fact that Jewish advocates refer to minority-based legal rights suggests that the Jewish minority benefits from the use of a broader international human rights discussion in the press. I claim that a multicultural discourse provides the Jewish minority with language that makes it possible to argue for cultural rights without referring to Jewishness; offering protection against a general fear of anti-Semitism.     

Cultures of unwelcome: Understanding the everyday histories of exclusionary practices – A view from across the German border

This article sheds light on the socio-cultural dynamics Merkel's open-door policy set in motion in Austria. Based on the Anti-Merkel discourses that came to infiltrate Austrian mainstream politics, it will show how the summer of displacements 2015 led to a pronounced move to the right. While many commentators have tended to link the post-2015 triumph of reactionary parties to the sense of crisis caused by the few months the European Union opened its borders to asylum seekers, the article demonstrates that we need to be more careful in our analyses of the roots of exclusion. By zooming in on the everydayness of anti-cosmopolitan practices in an Austrian mountain community, it argues that if we are to understand the current backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan ideas we need to pay attention to genealogies of exclusionary practices, or ‘cultures of unwelcome’.     

Academic writing as autocommunication – the case of doctoral dissertations on CSR

In this article, we explore the self‐oriented rather than socially‐oriented reasons why a doctoral dissertation in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is written. We base our article on Yuri M. Lotman’s idea on autocommunication which we use as tool in analysing a group interview conducted with six doctoral students studying in the field of CSR. We suggest that autocommunicational aspects might play a much more important role in rationalized Western culture and science than is often realized, and our main thesis is that one essential reason for writing a doctoral dissertation in the field of CSR might be to communicate with oneself and that this even might contain a therapeutic dimension. Implications for students, supervisors and future research are discussed at the end of the article.     

Cambodian youth managing expectations and uncertainties of the life course – a typology of biographical management

Globalising changes in recent decades have produced great impacts on young lives, and youth sociologists have been analysing how young people negotiate change and uncertainty in their lives. This article complements existing research by a case study on Cambodia, where young people have in recent years been charged to deal with drastic social changes but in social conditions different from the better known global North. By drawing on data from a study of young rural–urban migrant labour workers' and university students' life experiences and expectations in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, we systematically compare their sense making, action strategies and future orientation during their transition into working life. We present a theoretically informed but empirically grounded typology that illustrates three major modes of biographical management: entrepreneurial, traditional and situational, which are linked to different perceptions of uncertainty, future perspectives, action strategies, planning modes and resources available through the family, personal capacity and the larger sociocultural context. We conclude with critical remarks on the extent to which the fulfilment of Cambodian young people's hopes for a better life is shaped by broader social conditions and individual circumstances.     

Conflicts and empowerment – a processual perspective on the development of a partnership

Partnership working involving providers and users of social services is highly valued as a means to inform research and practice, yet its effectiveness is debated. Frameworks for measuring and evaluating partnerships are developed, but still there is a need to shed light on micro-practices to gain insight in how partnerships succeed or fail to reach their goals. The context for this qualitative study is a Norwegian governmental funded program, where one goal was promotion of structures for equal collaboration between social work education, research, social service providers and users. The study investigates one local partnership project and how conflicts influenced processes and outcomes. Conflicts were related to the leadership of the group. With a particular look at users’ participation, the findings indicate how emergence and negotiations of conflicts were related to their empowering processes as the project developed. The study underscores the importance of acknowledging conflicts and how these may be complex and interwoven with empowering processes when users are involved, as well as the need to critically examine issues on leadership. The study supports the importance of ethnographic studies in order to understand how a partnership might deliver, as this approach enables enhanced understanding of micro-practices and internal power dynamics.     

Binge drinking in adolescence – social stratification and the collectivity of drinking cultures

Research investigating what shapes young people’s drinking habits is of great importance. This study aimed to analyse the relation between close social networks and adolescents’ drinking habits and the extent to which close social networks may explain differences in binge drinking among social groups. Data from the ‘Stockholm Survey 2012’ were analysed. The Stockholm Survey was a census survey administered to students in academic years 9 and 11, with a response rate of 76%. Ordered logit models were used to estimate relations between the frequency of binge drinking and the independent variables. Parental educational level is associated with adolescent binge drinking, as students with more highly educated parents are more frequent binge drinkers. Parents’ willingness to offer their teenagers alcohol and peers’ drinking habits are also associated with adolescent binge drinking, with a more permissive parental attitude and a prevalence of drinking among peers increasing the risk. Both parents’ willingness to provide alcohol and peers’ drinking habits may statistically explain a large portion of the observed differences in adolescent drinking by parental education. Close social networks are an important factor influencing adolescent binge drinking, and they may explain a large portion of the differences between social groups.     

‘I Want to Persuade You!’ – Investigating the effectiveness of explicit persuasion concerning attributes of the communicator and the marketing campaign

In explicit persuasion, the communicator states explicitly a desire to persuade the consumer. By referring to an attributional approach, social engagement was simultaneously explored as a beneficial communicator attribute, while cause-related marketing (CRM) was addressed as a boundary condition. In an experiment, we varied the persuasion strategy (explicit vs. implicit), the communicator’s prior experience with social engagement (yes vs. no), and the specific marketing strategy (CRM vs. non-charity marketing). As expected, in the non-charity marketing condition, explicit (vs. implicit) persuasion was more effective when the communicator had prior experience in social engagement. In the CRM condition, explicit (vs. implicit) persuasion was less effective when the communicator had prior experience in social engagement; when no prior experience was reported, persuasiveness increased.     

Examining the differences between the use of wearable cameras and traditional cameras in research – a research note

Abstract

Photographic images allow data to be captured from an alternative perspective. Traditional, manual cameras are the most common method of recording photographic data, however, innovative technology is changing the way in which photographs can be collected. Wearable cameras enable a vast amount of photographic images to be captured, automatically, without user interaction. It is often assumed that photographic research methods are used for a similar purpose, engage participants in a similar way and yield a similar outcome, however, there are various differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and innovative, wearable cameras. This research note offers a unique contribution to the literature by highlighting the differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and wearable, automatic cameras within research.     

Why ‘Reunion in Democracy’ fails? – the past and the future of a colonial city

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the current political predicament in Hong Kong. However, rather than offering a casual political commentary on the current state of identity politics of Hong Kong, it offers a critical and historical evaluation of the ideas and practices of ‘Reunion in Democracy’ in the past decades.     

Independent inventors,social capital,and knowledge transfer – the case of Slovenia

This paper explores the role and significance of independent inventors within the national innovation system. By using a case study based on interviews with 22 independent inventors, it examines the types of social capital facilitating independent inventors' access to relevant knowledge and information. The findings show that, in line with their marginalization in the national innovation system, independent inventors have very limited access to the services and assistance of supportive organizations of the national innovation system. They primarily rely on the social capital residing in civil society organizations as well as the social capital of their family and friends. Professional and interdisciplinary linkages can thus be regarded as their weak point hindering their access to relevant knowledge and information.