“The ANC brand is bulletproof”: accountability and the logic of the brand in South African politics

In this paper, I draw on analyses of the brand in the commercial world to explore the implications of branding when applied to political parties and politicians. Specifically, I examine the ramifications of the logic of the brand for accountability within a multi-party democracy. I argue that in branding discourse, the brand serves as a risk-management strategy by creating relations of loyalty with consumers, designed to secure forgiveness for possible transgressions on the part of the brand and thus protect brand equity. Through an analysis of how branding discourse is applied to South African politics by journalists, political parties and participants in social media, I show how in this arena, branding logic works to defer accountability for political parties and politicians who fail to deliver on election promises. Culpability becomes assessed in terms of damage to brand.     

‘Your momma is day-glow white’: questioning the politics of racial identity,loyalty and obligation

This article utilizes discourse analysis and an auto-ethnographic approach to explore the impact of US racial and ethnic categorization on the experiences of an individual marked as ‘mixed-race’ in terms of individual identity and familial/cultural group loyalty and obligation(s). This essay focuses on an incidence of public policing through the popular social networking platform Facebook, centring on the invocation of racial obligation by white friends and family members. I analyse how racial loyalty is articulated by friends and family members in their posts on my personal Facebook page and how this ‘loyalty’ is used as means of regulating my mixed-race identity performance. This essay aims to understand several things, namely how identity is mediated through the invocation of racial obligation and how tension around identity plays out in the multiracial family.     

‘Let’s hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American’: racialising Muslims and the politics of white identity

This paper examines public discourse on race, whiteness and Muslims through an in-depth exploration of an online media controversy following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. On 16 April, the day after the attacks, the liberal magazine Salon.com published David Sirota’s article, ‘Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American’. A firestorm of commentary followed, with conservatives defending the profiling of Muslims, and accusing Sirota of anti-white racism. Anchored in questions of race, racism and Muslims and marked by a sharp partisan polarisation, these discussions intensified after 18 April, when the Tsarnaev brothers were identified as the perpetrators. The ensuing debate surrounding the racial identity of the Tsarnaevs displays how Muslim racialisation occurs and operates within a conservative discourse strongly committed to a colour-blind ideology. Our paper moves beyond this affirmation of literature on Muslim racialisation and sets this process within a relationally constructed and performative white racial identity.     

She is the Pride of the Chinese Nation

In the spring of 1958 when Princeton University awarded scientist Wu Jianxiong an honorary doctorate—the first ever to be given to a woman—the university president praised her as "the most honorable and most outstanding woman experimental physicist in the world."     

What's left in the community? Oppositional politics in contemporary practice

The growth of community-based not-for-profits in the Anglo-Americanworld has been mirrored by weakened political demands and adiminished set of critical political perspectives. Nevertheless,significant efforts in Anglo-American communities still existand provide examples of community-based organizing that havenot lost sight of the goals of social and economic justice.This article explores practice examples that demonstrate theexistence and possibilities of politically oppositional communityorganizing in the current difficult and complex political economy.These examples present effective, if imperfect, community initiatives.The three discussed – The Fifth Avenue Committee, ACORN,and Immigrant Worker Centres – offer alternatives to contemporaryforms of community practice moderated by economic globalizationand the policies of neo-liberalism. The article ends by drawinglessons from these experiences and their potential in the contemporarypolitical economy.     

‘Say no to the ATO’: the cultural politics of protest against the Australian Tax Office

Researching a broad array of protest forms offers valuable insights into social change. One such unusual form includes protests against tax law rulings made by the Australian Tax Office (ATO). Across Australia thousands of taxpayers invested in ‘tax effective schemes’ in the late 1990s. However, by 2000 each owed on average AUS$75,000 as a result of these schemes being ruled illegal. Rather than pay the money owed many have refused, publicly protesting through formal administrative and political mechanisms, and through public debate. At first glance, this appears an issue of individual economic self‐interest. However, qualitative research methods provide a more detailed and contextual picture of why protestors feel justified in their actions. Focusing on the hard‐hit Goldfields region of Western Australia, protests are argued as being about real and imagined identities; concerns over roles and status in Australian society; and the failings of institutional and political frameworks that should support, not penalize, citizens. The offence and ‘moral shock’ of being publicly labelled as ‘tax cheats’ facilitated protestors' view of themselves as workers trying to do the ‘right thing’ by their families and country. And as such, the normally private issue of individual tax affairs became a public debate and a site of cultural politics wherein the ATO's official discourse of rationality and regulation compliance is received by protestors as symbolic of their beleaguered position in Australian society. Here, citizenship struggles have not been eclipsed by post‐material or ‘new social movement’ concerns. Rather, sites of cultural politics, such as struggles over tax and identity, are constantly redrawn in light of new social practices and relations.     

If the PRS Experience in Latin America is a Disappointment,What is the Alternative?

This is a reflection inspired by Geske Dijkstra's article ‘The PRSP Approach and the Illusion of Improved Aid Effectiveness: Lessons from Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua’ (Development Policy Review 23 (4), July 2005) which questions the usefulness of the PRS approach in Latin America, building to a considerable degree on studies carried out in the three countries by the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), which Sida financed. ¹ 1 The reports are produced annually and available at http://www.iss.nl/prsp .
     

Social work and the politics of ‘austerity’: Ireland and Italy

ABSTRACT

No detailed analyses have been undertaken comparing and contrasting how social work is responding to the problems generated by the imposition of so-called ‘austerity’ measures in Europe. Comprised of three sections, the discussion is focused on Ireland and Italy. This comparative exploration locates social work within encompassing frameworks related to the changing population, political economy and welfare regime in each of these jurisdictions. Aspects of contemporary social work within Ireland and Italy are charted and the possibilities for confronting neoliberal ‘austerity’ are analysed. The article seeks to prompt and encourage comparative reflection within Europe in relation to how the social work imagination can be imbued with a new radicalism in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.     

Decolonisation postponed: the failure of the colonial politics of Marcelo Caetano (1968–1974)

This paper discusses the incapacity of the Portuguese Estado Novo to successfully decolonise its territories in southern Africa, especially Angola and Mozambique. More precisely, what I will analyse is the failure of the policy of autonomy for the colonies promoted by Portugal’s Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano between 1968 and 1974. As such, I will first analyse the Portuguese colonial administration’s reform process carried out by Marcelo Caetano, under its policy of “progressive autonomy and participation” of the colonies. Then, I will discuss the limits of this policy of autonomy and the brewing of strong tensions within the Portuguese regime. Finally, I will make a few remarks about the blockade of Marcelo Caetano’s government, which resulted in the fall of the dictatorship on April 25, 1974     

What,to the law,is the former slave?

This essay examines a subset of Reconstruction-era cases decided in Southern appellate courts that dealt with the legacies of slavery. Drawing on suits that either described emancipation as legal death or considered black civil rights, it argues that judges placed freedpeople into a distinct legal category – the former slave – in order to preserve the antebellum legal status quo. Opinions differentiated free-born citizens from those who acquired rights after emancipation, and marked freedpeople with stains of their previous servitude, which limited their potential for the equal enjoyment of newly acquired civil rights.     

The struggle for ‘our streets’: the digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement

ABSTRACT

The Ferguson Movement of 2014 and 2015 reached national salience immediately following the murder of Michael Brown, after residents took to social media platforms to report from what many activists called ‘ground zero.’ Some popular and scholarly conversations have couched the movement largely through its online manifestations; this study, however, places the movement within the intersections of digital and physical space as well as the broader political context of St. Louis. Triangulating data from 21 unstructured interviews with local activists in St. Louis, Missouri with GIS and digital media analysis, we illustrate how activists in the Ferguson Movement organized within St. Louis’ physical space and challenged popular arguments about resistance in digital space. Consequently, we argue that social movements’ placeness remain important despite recent emphases on digital media.     

Quest for BeautyTimes and Methods ChangBut the Goal is the Same

THE Chinese traditionally have held a contradictory attitude about female beauty. In the Book of Songs women's good looks are praised: "How pretty she looks when she smiles at the right moment, how inviting her beautiful eyes are." These are lines which remain famous because the ideal they convey is still popular in modern China. Even the Ballad of Mu Lan, written during the Northern Dynasty, describes how Mu Lan made up in front of the mirror after she returned from active service for her father. Female beauty and women's jewelry was so appreciated in the past that fendai (fen is cosmetic powder and dai is a black pigment used by women in ancient times to darken their eyebrows) and qunchai (qun is a skirt and chai a hairpin) became synonymous with women. Yet at the same time, female beauty was considered mysterious, a taboo whose temptation was very much feared by men. Historically, great beauties were placed in two     

The religious field and the path-dependent transformation of popular politics in the Anglo-American world, 1770–1840

This article examines the formative influence of the organizational field of religion on emerging modern forms of popular political mobilization in Britain and the United States in the early nineteenth century when a transition towards enduring campaigns of extended geographical scale occurred. The temporal ordering of mobilization activities reveals the strong presence of religious constituencies and religious organizational models in the mobilizatory sequences that first instituted a mass-produced popular politics. Two related yet analytically distinct generative effects of the religious field can be discerned. First, in both cases the transition toward modern forms of popular mobilization was driven by the religious institutionalization of organizational forms of centralized voluntarism that facilitated extensive collective action. Second, the adoption of different varieties of the same organizational forms led to important divergences. The spread in the United States of societies for moral reformation—in contrast to their non-survival in Britain—steered popular politics there towards a more moralistic framing of public issues. These findings indicate the importance of the organizational field of religion for the configuration of modern forms of popular collective action and confirm the analytical importance of religion’s organizational aspects for the study of collective action.     

‘Civilising’ the Roma? The depoliticisation of (anti-)racism within the politics of integration

This essay questions the enduring difficulties of addressing racism within the current politics of integration in Europe, with a specific focus on the Portuguese context. The analysis centres on integration initiatives to promote employability among the Portuguese Roma and the ways in which they are rationalised by employment gatekeepers and decision-makers. This rationalisation depoliticises racism by constantly shifting the focus to the presumed characteristics of the ‘other’, re-enacting white-privileged notions of nationhood, Portugueseness and Europeanness. Accordingly, projects based on ‘activation of social competences’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘interculturality’ are implemented as a civilising and disciplinary programme aimed at correcting the presumed deficiencies in ethnically marked populations. The analysis aims to contribute towards a much needed debate on the notion of integration and the re-articulation of the historical legacies of racism in contemporary European democracies.     

Student resistance and the democratic transition: student politics in Senegal 1999–2005

University students participated in the democratic transition in Senegal that, throughout the 1990s, saw student activists across the continent advocate for political change. This paper examines the role students played in the election of the new government in Senegal in 2000 and the years that followed. Many student activists in Senegal argued that they were responsible for the changement politique, that saw the first defeat of the ruling Socialist Party since independence in 1960 and the victory of Abdoulaye Wade – ‘papa sopi’ (‘the father of change’). The paper considers the relationship of students to the new governments. It argues that students in Senegal, and across the continent, have played a vital role in political transformations, though not in circumstances chosen by them.     

Demanding an ‘adequate solution:’ the American Legion,the Immigration Act of 1924, and the politics of exclusion

This article analyses the American Legion’s role in developing a discourse of exclusion surrounding the Immigration Act of 1924. The Legion strategically used the political rhetoric of states’ rights and federalism in addition to racist and nativist language to emphasise the need for increased federal restrictions on immigration. The arguments found in the Legion’s resolutions, pamphlets and testimony to Congress place the organisation’s emphasis on the political disruptions caused by Japanese migrants within the context of evolving immigration reform. The Legion’s activism in exclusion contributes to an understanding of the history of states’ rights and federalism tropes in anti-immigrant arguments during the twentieth century.     

The politics of death: on life after the “end of history”

In this paper, the most recent writings by Giorgio Agamben and Bruno Latour are brought into dialog by examining what light they shed on contemporary debates concerning “end of life” decisions. More specifically, the paper focuses on the debates sparked by Diane Pretty's request for a grant of immunity against legal prosecution if her husband were to assist her to commit suicide and so terminate her increasingly unbearable suffering from motor neurone disease. The aim of this exercise is to articulate the presuppositions informing two influential and radically opposed views on the contemporary reconfiguration of relationships between humans, animals and other non‐humans.     

Diaspora and development? Nigerian organizations in London and the transnational politics of belonging

Through a particular focus on the politics of belonging, I explore in this article the extent to which London‐based Nigerian organizations perform the progressive role expected of them in globalizing discourses of diaspora and development. The interplay between national and sub‐national, geo‐ethnic visions of belonging and development has fundamental implications for viability of the Nigerian state. In the ways they mobilize identity ‘abroad’ and make transnational interventions at ‘home’, London‐based Nigerian diaspora organizations can reproduce a pervasive and insidiously divisive politics of belonging that is widely seen to undermine the Nigerian project. However, these organizations and their transnational interventions can also transcend the ethnicized boundaries of belonging to articulate and pursue visions of Nigeria's national development. While they are involved in the politics of belonging and the progress of ‘home’ in ways that are clearly much more ambivalent than globalizing discourses of diaspora and development might hope, their potential for contributing to a unified and prosperous Nigeria should not be dismissed.