Drug War Politics: Governing Culture Through Prohibition,Intoxicants as Customary Practice and the Challenge of Drug Normalisation

This article on the American administration’s war on drugs policy uses an interdisciplinary approach to assess the assumptions of drug prohibition. It applies a historical and contemporary analysis to the issue of drugs in society. It will explore new ways of thinking about drug war politics, aiming to address drugs as a source of political state repression. American foreign policy has sought to use the war on drugs to reduce human suffering; but instead, the age of prohibition has brought financial opportunities for criminal syndicates and clandestine political operations and causes. I will seek to show that prohibition faces serious challenges as a result of changes in contemporary culture and communication. I will argue that prohibition has been concerned with more than drug control and through drug war policy, it has wider ambitions to govern culture through prohibition. The paper explores the growth of drug normalisation and questions whether drugs can be understood as a customary practice across social groups in different communities and asks to what extent the United Nations policy of ‘cultural sensitivity’ can fit alongside an aggressive war on drugs policy.     

Between sociology and the business school: critical studies of work,employment and organization in the UK

This is a paper about what happens when a form of knowledge moves to another part of the university. The author, identifying himself as an ‘ex‐sociologist’, investigates the relationship between the sociology of work, employment and organization and various ‘critical’ traditions within the business school. I argue that the contemporary divide between sociologies of work and employment, and Critical Management Studies (CMS) within the business school rests in part on developments in UK sociology in the 1960s and 70s. This means that divergent understandings of the role of sociology and its relevant theoretical resources provided the deep structure for the current tension between CMS on the one hand and research on work and employment on the other. The movement of sociologists and industrial relations academics to the business school provided the preconditions for two very different critical traditions. The paper concludes with thoughts on what it means to be an outsider inside an institution, and on the future prospects for Burawoy's ‘critical’ or ‘public’ sociologies in UK business schools.     

Fragments and Links: Organizational Actor‐World of the Harry Potter Phenomenon

The article seeks to develop an Actor‐Network Theory perspective on the relationship between organization and literature by focusing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. The latter is seen as an example of how contemporary popular literature does not stop at itself, but rather supersedes itself by spinning its own truly impressive organizational actor‐network. This industrious industrial entanglement challenges what may be called the ‘disembodied’ conceptualization of literature—the conceptualization that is centred on the contents of works of fiction alone. When the contents of the literary texts are decentred in that they are taken as but one (however important) actor of the actor‐world that comes to be known by their name, other actors become more visible that help to conceptualize Harry Potter as an organizational, as much as a literary, phenomenon.     

MADE IN THE USA: LATINAS/OS?, GARMENT WORK AND ETHNIC CONFLICT IN LOS ANGELES' SWEAT SHOPS

In the 1990s Latino identity is increasingly constructed as a ‘universal’, ‘classless’ and genderless pan-ethnicity. In this article I problematize this construct through an ethnographic study of Latina workers in the Los Angeles garment industry whose jobs are not only gender and ethnic specific but also immigrant specific. These women are located at the bottom of a complex organizational structure of an industry that promotes Third World conditions in the US in addition to promoting inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conflict among workers. The voiced testimonies of these Latina garment workers provide a vivid record of contractor abuse, the unrelenting demands and difficulties of garment work, and the exploitative conditions and ethnic rivalries that make it difficult for Latinas to forge an effective culture of resistance. I argue that the survival of Latina garment workers rests on their ability to negotiate collaborative relations based on their unique struggles and experiences within the garment industry as women, immigrants, racialized workers and specific types of Latina Americanas. Finally, I highlight the importance of recording the insights of those women who not only experience the contemporary conditions of global capitalism, but also endeavour to speak rather than silence these conditions.     

Mother Died Today or Maybe Yesterday: Reflections of L'etranger on Team‐Based Forms of Work Organization

One of the most enduring images of late twentieth‐century popular culture was the individualist and iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘grumpy old man’ Victor Meldrew in the BBC television series One Foot in the Grave. Richard Wilson's portrayal of the recently retired security worker is the antithesis of everything that contemporary organizations require from the idealized vision of employee as ‘team‐player’. As one who revels in the way that the epitaph ‘Victor’ is thrown at me at regular intervals both by my partner and children, at times when I think I am behaving normally, I thought it would be interesting for me to reflect, in public, on my relationship to contemporary workplace relations. It is my contention that Meldrew's characterization is not wholly based around the age dimension but is equally based upon his portrayal as an individual ill at ease with the mores of gregariousness. The essay therefore is a self‐reflective piece in which the author places himself in a particular milieu—that of L'etranger and uses this ‘placing’ in order to discuss the relationship between what he defines as ‘the outsider’ and the issue of age discrimination in contemporary blue‐collar environments. It is suggested that whilst the outsider or L'etranger is accepted under certain conditions within the managerial labour process this same level of organizational tolerance is not afforded to older workers within blue‐collar areas. It moves from a reflective, even autodidactic exploration of the relationship between the author and cultural articulations of L'etranger and uses this to inform an analysis of the acceptance of L'etranger within some aspects of the managerial labour within team based manufacturing units. In exploring these issues the essay then attempts to develop a third narrative in terms of now L'etranger, approaching the age of retirement fits in to the new academic labour process.     

Limites et pertinence de la guerre juste face au terrorisme et aux nouvelles guerres

This article aims to examine the pertinence as well as the limits of the just war theory in order to apprehend the ethical issues raised by contemporary forms of political violence. Terrorism is undoubtedly an extreme case of political violence that puts to the test the theoretical and practical relevance of jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. From a sociological point of view, it appears necessary to understand contemporary terrorism within the historical evolution of armed conflicts and under the light of current research devoted to the concept of ‘new wars’. Although I will argue that just war theory does not sufficiently take into account current studies on the empirical features of contemporary wars, it is nonetheless possible to salvage the theoretical and practical relevance of just war theory in a more specified sense. From a philosophical point of view, the goal of this article is to confront the theoretical and practical relevance of just war theory with the current body of research in the field of the sociology of war in order to assess both its limitations and its potential scope.     

Caught on camera,posted online: mediated moralities,visual politics and the case of urban ‘drought-shaming’

The ‘shaming’ of subjects caught on camera, engaging in socially transgressive acts of varying kinds, has become a familiar occurrence and locus of ambivalent possibility in contemporary public culture. In this article, I theorise the socio-moral complexities and visual politics of ostensibly civic forms of online shaming through an in-depth analysis of a single case: urban ‘drought-shaming’ in California (2014–2015). Drawing on interpretive methods of social analysis and anchored by the classical sociological tradition, I highlight the role of images, especially the circulation of still photographs taken and posted by ordinary members, in the emerging problematisation of excessive water use at the centre of this case. Understood as a vital and diminishing resource within an interconnected and interdependent social order, water was made sacred; it was prohibited from being handled in mundane or carelessly reckless ways during the drought. A state-of-emergency came to be constituted (also) as a moral drama. The language and practices constitutive of drought-shaming, I argue, contributed to a popular sociological imagination of water use whose critical dimensions transcend the specificities of this case. To highlight its ritual structure within the context of a viable and organically solidaristic collective order, I compare online civic shaming with the ‘status degradation ceremony’, as theorised by Harold Garfinkel in the 1950s. Comparable in that it constitutes a new form of public denunciation with socially integrative and renewing possibilities, there are also differences that shed light onto some of the new and defining elements of public shaming in a digitally convergent, visually mediated, and (more) participatory media-sphere. Finally, revealing significant overlap and collaboration between social, news, and tabloid media in the social production of mediated shaming today, this study is located at the border of visual sociology and a critical sociology of visual representation in contemporary mediated society.     

Exploring OD in Africa: A response to David Lewis

Organization development (OD) has become an increasingly popular approach among international donors who are eager to improve the impact of their aid to developing countries. Major questions, however, have been raised as to whether this is not another example of “technique peddling” by Western donors and consultants. Many argue that this participatory, imported, Western approach to organizational change relies on cultural assumptions of open discussion that are simply not present in many developing societies. Taking up Lewis's challenge in his article “Organization and Management in the Third Sector: Towards a Cross‐Cultural Research Agenda” (NML 2002), this article explores the veracity of such concerns. Using practitioner experience of implementing OD with African NGOs, this article reveals that many principles of OD are pre‐existing within African cultures and are not a new foreign import. It concludes that, as with any culture, there are aspects that undermine and reinforce particular approaches to management and change. An anthropological perspective can assist in understanding the local culture sufficiently to be able to identify, avoid, or overcome cultural resistance, while at the same time using cultural symbols as levers for change.     

Forging the Nation-centric World: Imperial Rule and the Homogenisation of Discontent in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918)

Historical sociologists have questioned the idea that nationalism and imperialism are mutually exclusive phenomena. In contrast to traditional historiography that depicted empires as ‘the prison houses of nations’ contemporary scholarship emphasises the structural and ideological ambiguities that characterised the 19th century European imperial projects. Hence instead of ‘popular longings’ for national independence the focus has shifted to the experiences of ‘national indifference’. In this paper I aim to go beyond this dichotomy by questioning the role of (nationalist) agency in the collapse of imperial order. Drawing on the primary archival research I zoom in on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Austro-Hungarian rule (1878–1918). The paper contests the view that the imperial state was severely undermined by the presence of strong nationalisms. I also challenge the notion that the majority of Bosnian population remained ‘nationally indifferent’ during this period. Instead, I argue that understanding the character of the Austro-Hungarian rule is a much better predictor of social change that took place in this period. Rather than stifling supposedly vibrant nationalisms or operating amidst widespread national indifference the imperial state played a decisive role in forging the nation-centric world through its inadvertent homogenisation of discontent.     

Connection and constitution: locating war and culture in globalization studies

War and the military are neglected in globalization studies, despite the fact that the worldwide circulation of people, goods and ideas often takes warlike form. This article seeks to remedy this neglect by conceiving war itself as a form of interconnection between peoples and locales, and as an occasion for circulation and interchange. The article develops a multi-dimensional and historical conception of globalization as relations of connection and mutual constitution, and locates war and culture within them. Cultural approaches to globalization are used to illuminate the role of war and the military in consciousness of the world as a whole and to address the significance of military ‘traveling cultures’.     

Anthropology and the theorisation of citizenship

In this paper I argue for the importance of theorising citizenship as an independent axis of social inequality in the contemporary world. As a foil, I take two intertwined tendencies within anthropological writings on migration. First is the historical trend of anthropology as a discipline to theorise against the grain of the nation-state. Second is the tendency within anthropological studies of transnationalism and migration to theorise their subject in terms of Marxian understandings of class and exploitation or in terms of the intersecting dimensions of race, class and gender (but not citizenship). The result of these approaches is to elide the role of national boundaries and citizenship as significant theoretical objects in themselves. To build my approach, I contrast the production of migrant ‘illegality’ in three national contexts: the United States, China and Australia.     

RECLAIMING HERITAGE: COLOURIZATION,CULTURE WARS AND THE POLITICS OF NOSTALGIA

This article considers the discursive continuities between a specifically liberal defence of cultural patrimony, evident in the debate over film colourization, and the culture war critique associated with neo-conservatism. It examines how a rhetoric of nostalgia, linked to particular ideas of authenticity, canonicity and tradition, has been mobilized by the right and the left in attempts to stabilize the configuration and perceived transmission of American cultural identity. While different in scale, colourization and multiculturalism were seen to create respective (postmodern) barbarisms against which defenders of culture, heritage and good taste could unite. I argue that in its defence of the ‘classic’ work of art, together with principles of aesthetic distinction and the value of cultural inheritance, the anti-colourization lobby helped enrich and legitimize a discourse of tradition that, at the end of the 1980s, was beginning to reverberate powerfully in the conservative challenge to a ‘crisis’ within higher education and the humanities. This article attempts to complicate the contemporary politics of nostalgia, showing how a defence of cultural patrimony has distinguished major and minor culture wars, engaging left and right quite differently but with similar presuppositions.     

Michelle Bachelet's Liderazgo Femenino (Feminine Leadership)

Evidence of military involvement in sexual exploitation and aggression against civilians on peacekeeping operations has led many feminists to question the appropriateness of using soldiers to create peace. They argue that the problems stem from a particular form of military masculinity, hegemonic within western militaries, associated with practices of strength, toughness and aggressive heterosexuality. Masculinities, however, are multiple, dynamic and contradictory. As they are constructed in relation to the contexts men find themselves in, involvement in peacekeeping may itself play a role in the construction of alternative military masculinities. Examining autobiographical accounts of soldiers involved in peacekeeping in Bosnia in the 1990s, I argue that there is evidence of an alternative discourse of ‘peacekeeper masculinity’, but question whether it fully challenges the hegemony of the warrior model. I acknowledge that peacekeeper masculinity is also problematic because although it disrupts elements of the traditional linkages between militarism and masculinity, it still relies on a feminized and racialized ‘Other’. Yet, I suggest that this is not the only way in which peacekeeper masculinity can be viewed. It can alternatively be considered part of a ‘regendered military’, which may be a necessary component of successful conflict resolution.     

‘Northernness’, gender and Manchester’s creative industries

This article explores northernness and gender in the context of creative industries in Manchester. I argue that a version of northernness has been mobilised by those within the creative industries and that this identity is strongly linked with masculinity. The article examines the emergence of new creative industries in Manchester from the 1980s onwards. Many of these new creative industries were connected with music and club culture and often prioritised ‘lads’ and their interests. The ‘heritage’ and influence of this seedbed stage of Manchester’s creative industries and the dominant discourses about Manchester’s pop cultural creativity has had a profound influence on the ‘gendering’ of subsequent creative industries in this city. A paradigm of northern ‘laddishness’ pervades the creative sector in Manchester, and this is amplified and sustained by a powerful, media fuelled, cultural identity of the city and its popular culture. A number of local specificities have had an impact on linking creativity to ‘northern’ masculinity in the Manchester case. This has contributed to the ascendency of closed, male-dominated networks in the creative sector. This appears to stand in the way of women’s full access to, and participation in, the city’s creative industries. I suggest that all empirical case studies of creative industries could find value in reflecting on the local context and specificities of place. Using Manchester as a case study, I argue that place-specific identities could productively be explored in debates about exclusion and underrepresentation of women in creative industries.     

The spatial politics of the past unbound: transnational networks and the making of political identities

In this article I consider the relations between historical and contemporary forms of transnational political networks. I contest accounts that counterpose a networked present against a more settled and bounded past, arguing that this contrast rests on a problematic temporalization of difference in the construction of political identities. I consider how this temporalization produces particular accounts of relations between space, politics and identity. Drawing on the insurgent imaginative geography of resistance in C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins, I argue for a focus on the dynamic geographies of connection formed through transnational networks. I develop this position through a discussion of the relations of the London Corresponding Society, formed in London in 1792, to transnational routes of political activists, organizational forms and ideas. This account highlights the multiple political identities crafted through transnational political networks. I conclude by outlining elements of a ‘usable past’ for contemporary counter‐global struggles.     

Who's Afraid of Third Wave Feminism?

This article addresses some issues related to the question of the ‘third wave’ within contemporary British feminism, situating British debates within an international context. My argument is that existing accounts of third wave feminism treat it either in terms of what the term means to the author, or it is treated as a coherent and easily recognizable movement or set of positions within contemporary feminism. By contrast, I adopt an approach drawn from poststructuralist discourse theory which emphasizes the diverse and overlapping ways in which the notion of a ‘third wave’ is appropriated by academics and activists alike. From this theoretical base, I trace two different conceptions of the ‘third wave’ – one referring to a poststructuralist and postcolonial critique of the second wave – and another referring to a specific generational cohort of young feminists. I argue that the latter conception has become dominant in the contemporary British context and to a lesser extent elsewhere. The second half of the article develops a critique of the ‘generational paradigm’ of third wave feminism, drawing on interviews with activists and postcolonial academic perspectives.     

Manacled to Identity: Cosmopolitanism,Class, and ‘The Culture Concept’ in Stephen Crane

Abstract

This article begins with a close reading of Stephen Crane’s short story ‘Manacled’ from 1900, which situates this rarely considered short work within the context of contemporary debates about realism. I then proceed to argue that many of the debates raised by the tale have an afterlife in our own era of American literary studies, which has frequently focused on questions of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ in its reading of realism and naturalism to the exclusion of the importance of cosmopolitan discourses of diffusion and exchange across national borders. I then offer a brief reading of Crane’s novel George’s Mother, which follows Walter Benn Michaels in suggesting that the recent critical attention paid to particularities of cultural difference in American studies have come to conflate ideas of class and social position with ideas of culture in ways that have ultimately obscured the presence of genuine historical inequalities in US society. In order to challenge this critical commonplace, I situate Crane’s work within a history of transatlantic cosmopolitanism associated with the ideas of Franz Boas and Matthew Arnold to demonstrate the ways in which Crane’s narratives sought out an experience of the universal within their treatments of the particular.     

Culture,Development, and Social Theory

The following comment was written in response to conference presentations by John Clammer and Raymond Apthorpe. In his paper, ‘Development Futures and Cultural Choices’ (in this issue as ‘Culture, Development and Social Theory’), Clammer traced recent emphases in conceptualisations of ‘culture’, in order to ask whether these better serve an integration of culture and development: (1) the idea of culture as process, (2) the rediscovery of indigenous knowledge, and (3) the integration of economy and culture. I argue that, while each of these has something good to bring, even taking account of all of them would leave us with a rather anorexic version of what is needed: systematic and sustained analysis and theorisation of social relations; and the attempt to weigh up the implications for proposed or negotiated social intervention and directional change. I exemplify issues with a discussion of the Papua New Guinea elections of 2002. Apthorpe's contribution builds on his explorations of tendencies inherent in development practice and discourse, to which I add its claims to serial progress, consistent with its technocratic tendencies.     

Spivak,in other words

The publication of texts by Chicana feminists in the 1980s offered an alternative mapping of feminist literary cartographies and subject positions. This article examines the work of contemporary Chicana writer, Sandra Cisneros, whose literary text enacts a practice of Chicana feminism that engages with a transnational, transfronteriza practice of feminismo popular, which literally translates as ‘popular feminism’. This type of border feminism articulates a feminist materialist aesthetics that enables us to re-examine an emergent formation of feminism on the border, a formation characterized by specific types of movements of Mexican women across geopolitical boundaries and borders. The complex movements of this transnational Chicana feminism are announced in the story ‘Woman Hollering Creek’, which complicates the binarisms of the metropolitan opposed to the rural, the core and periphery, and militates against a reductionist opposition of First World versus Third World. I argue that armed with a transfrontera feminism, the protagonist Cleofilas and her peers can resist the power of a transnational media. This story changes the subject of dominant, patriarchal discourse and lets readers imagine how Chicana transfrontera feminism and Mexican feminismo popular can converge in other spaces and under other circumstances to produce socially nuanced global Chicana Mexicana coalitions.