ON THE REGISTERS OF CARIBBEAN MEMORY OF SLAVERY1

From discourses elicited by the presence of a slave cemetery in Guadeloupe, the author distinguishes various registers of memory that offer a framework for understanding Caribbean identities. The absence of a meta-discourse is not seen as a vacuum or as a lack which would indicate the weakness of the collective ethos. Rather, it is interpreted through the multiplicity of narratives which replaces the Grand Narrative. This interpretation leads to a more empirically-informed constructivism trying to approach ‘mutiplicity’ on the basis of an account of what could be a multiple textual matrix. In time, this capacity to create several narratives is analyzed in relationship to a particular experience of power relations that has produced an alert critical consciousness which refuses to grant a meta-narrative any centrality and tends to create a multiply-segmented collectivity.     

The Bounded Female Voice in Memorial Ceremonies

Using the Israeli case the aim of this paper is to problematize the male dominance of the memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers and to ask whether it is challenged by female voices. Analysis of 50 accounts of ceremonies (elicited from semi-structured observations) as performed in Israeli schools during the last decade reveals that the female voice is heard loudly and introduces a model of mourning ritual that competes with the heroic canonic memory. Yet this voice is not a subversive one, but rather follows the traditional role assigned for women by the male order and redefines the nation state. A new form of nationalism emerges that shifts its center of gravity from a warrior ethos to an ethos of suffering.     

MEMORY AND ECHO

Much contemporary writing about law treats popular culture as a creature of modern technology and the phenomenon of mass media. This misunderstands both its continuity with traditional forms, and the precise differences that modern technology creates. Popular cultural representations of law and justice appeal to a longstanding tradition evident in familiar archetypes of cowboys and superheroes. Indeed, such a tradition reaches back to much older Christological models of justice and subjectivity, which modernism has deflected but never destroyed. On the other hand, hi-tech media embeds those traditions in technology's language of passivity and its strange but insistent erasure of the past. Under conditions of the contemporary world, popular culture appears not as the memory of past thinking about law, but as an echo. The irony is that while popular culture's presentations of law appeal to a substantive tradition, their formal hyper-modernity not only negates that past but undermines the pluralist and discursive openness which are its well-spring. In a world shorn of faith in the traditional structures sustaining the ‘moral economy’ and a moral legality, the appeal to simply trust in an inarticulable justice opens the prospect not of salvation but of legal tyranny.     

Nike,Colin Kaepernick,and the politicization of sports: Examining perceived organizational motives and public responses

This study applies arguments from attribution theory to examine the role of perceived motives (values-driven, egoistic-driven, strategic-driven, and stakeholder-driven motives) in developing individuals’ attitudes, positive word-of-mouth (PWOM), and negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intentions in response to Nike’s 30th Anniversary ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. This study also examines how perceptions of the appropriateness of the politicization of sports moderate these relationships, as well as individual factors that predict people’s assessments of sports as a politicized event. A survey (N = 373) was conducted to examine how much people’s perceptions of Nike’s motives for engaging in Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA) guided their responses and the degree to which they were likely to engage in actions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

A top-down movement with grass-roots effects? Alexei Navalny’s electoral campaign

Today’s Russia is a hostile environment for genuine political activity, and especially for movements that aim at changing the current power structure. This is due to the factually limited manoeuvre space of oppositional actors who face obstacles in the form of repression, surveillance and restricted access to the public sphere. Moreover, society is largely apolitical, with political activity often considered futile, immoral, or dangerous. In this profile, we portray the electoral campaign of the opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who built a popular movement around his bid to participate in the 2018 presidential elections. Although the campaign failed to build up sufficient pressure for Navalny to be granted access to the elections, and despite the strong hierarchy inside his campaign, we argue that it contributed to the politicization of parts of the younger generation in the country’s provinces – which may have greater long-term effects than any concrete projects envisioned or controlled by the campaign’s strategists.     

Corruption in the politicized university: lessons for Ukraine's 2010 presidential elections

This article argues that corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control from the state level down to local authorities and administrations of public and private institutions of higher education. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime was commonplace in the former Soviet Union. This article explains how corrupt regimes maximize their position in terms of loyalty and compliance using the example of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, which later became known as the Orange Revolution. The 2010 presidential elections and their aftermath pose new challenges to those aspiring to power. This article presents mechanisms by which political bureaucracies politicize universities in order to influence students and channel their electoral power during presidential campaigns.     

EXTERNAL AIDS FOR SOCIAL MEMORY

Collective or social memories are not just a way for accumulating and preserving but also for sharing and developing knowledge. Indeed, as knowledge is made explicit and elaborated by a community, it enriches the local culture and the current practices, becoming a basis for communication and learning. This paper addresses the concept of 'social memory' in a specific 'community of practice': teachers and students of primary schools. The work is developed within HIPS1 (Hyper Interaction within Physical Space), a three-year (1997-2000) research project funded by the European Commission within the I 3 (I-Cube) Programme. HIPS is a hand-held location-aware tourist guide that delivers information related to the surrounding space mainly reacting to the physical movements of visitors (Benelli et al . 1999). The guide is designed to minimize the boundary between the physical space and the related information through a number of situated and contextual-aware interaction mechanisms. In the paper we present a specific application of HIPS as tool to support the creation of a social memory. First, we illustrate the theoretical framework, the cultural psychology (Vygotsky 1978), which we adopted to design the tool as an external aid for social memory. Afterwards we describe the user study and the design process that resulted in the development of an early prototype. The conclusions are a reflection about the use of new technology to open new learning opportunities for students.     

Contesting European policies without being (openly) Eurosceptic? An empirical analysis of the political communication of Attac associations towards European integration (2004–2008)

This article uses claims-making analysis to delineate the main features of the political communication of four Attac associations in France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. As one of the most prominent associations of the alter-globalization movement, Attac illustrates quite well the type of political communication that those social movements develop towards European integration. The empirical analysis suggests that Attac associations mainly address demands towards the European level, using the European Central Bank and the Commission as privileged targets viewed as non-majoritarian institutions far away from citizens' democratic control. It also shows that the nature of the discourse of contestation promoted by Attac associations is essentially related to the European policy-making process but not necessarily to the EU polity in itself. It suggests that, under certain circumstances, alter-globalization movements might be actively involved in a potential process of politicization of European issues at the national level.     

The self in selfies—Conceptualizing the selfie-coordination of marginalized youth with sociology of engagements

This article develops a theory of selfies as reflexive practices of self-coordination. Building on pragmatist sociology of engagements, I conceptualize selfies as digital practices of coordinating with the self in formats that are recognizable for others. This framework allows approaching the self as an act of coordination, simultaneously shaped by, and equipped to subvert the cultural conditions of how we ought to be. As these conditions are increasingly enforced and negotiated in the socio-technological arrangements of digital platforms, the article proposes an approach for making sense of selfies as key contemporary tools of self-making. Based on ethnographic work among activists with marginalizing experiences, I ask how the self is coordinated in the activists' selfies. I identify four ways of coordinating with the self in selfies: the self in a plan, the self in exploration, the affirmed self, and the self as public critique. The article contributes to our understanding on how practices of self-making evolve in an increasingly visual-digital society, and provides an approach for conceptualising the self as plural. By approaching the selfie as different formats of relating to the self, the framework proposed accounts for the possibility of multiple selves now afforded by digital technologies and enables analysing their politicizing potential.     

International organizations beyond depoliticized governance

This article aims at questioning the idea that international organizations (IOs) are ‘depoliticized’ by nature. Based on a review of the literature in sociology, political science, and anthropology about IOs, the purpose is to provide an analysis of the dialectic about politicization and depoliticization in IOs. We identify the main processes through which depoliticization is operated by IOs: the use of ethics and norms, the political neutralization of their official rhetoric, and the resorting to multiform expertise as a means of apolitical self-legitimization. We also explore the factors that may explain this tendency to depoliticize: their problematic status in regard to democratic theory, the diplomatic constraints attached to the intergovernmental structure of their managing bodies, and the administrative and cultural constraints that befall IOs’ bureaucracies. Finally, we try to go beyond the concept of depoliticization by stressing the consequences of politicization that stem from IOs’ resilient political rhetoric and from the ethical norms and expertise produced by IOs. Because IOs cannot totally eliminate political controversy and debates, the idea of ‘international depoliticized governance’ as a result of IOs activity should be put into perspective.     

Why different countries manage death differently: a comparative analysis of modern urban societies

The sociology of death, dying and bereavement tends to take as its implicit frame either the nation state or a homogenous modernity. Between-nation differences in the management of death and dying are either ignored or untheorized. This article seeks to identify the factors that can explain both similarities and differences in the management of death between different modern western nations. Structural factors which affect all modern nations include urbanization and the division of labour leading to the dominance of professionals, migration, rationality and bureaucracy, information technology and the risk society. How these sociologically familiar structural features are responded to, however, depends on national histories, institutions and cultures. Historically, key transitional periods to modernity, different in different nations, necessitated particular institutional responses in the management of dying and dead bodies. Culturally, key factors include individualism versus collectivism, religion, secularization, boundary regulation, and expressivism. Global flows of death practices depend significantly on subjugated nations' perceptions of colonialism, neo-colonialism and modernity, which can lead to a dominant power's death practices being either imitated or rejected.     

Is Death Taboo for Children? Developing Death Ambivalence as a Theoretical Framework to Understand Children’s Relationship with Death,Dying and Bereavement

Children’s voices are missing from debates related to the idea that death is a taboo subject and this limits understandings of how children encounter death. Drawing on data from focus groups with children aged 9–12, this paper aimed to explore if and how children experience death as a taboo, but discovered that the death‐taboo thesis lacks nuance, confining and misrepresenting children’s experiences. Death ambivalence is thus proposed as a conceptual tool to illuminate children’s relationship with death. It identifies policy and practice implications concerned with developing death literacy and brings a new theorisation to death and childhood studies.     

Partial publicity and gendered remembering: figuring women in culture and performance

This essay brings representational issues of female publicity into recent discussions about space, community and memory. Cultural analysts in a variety of fields have used these concepts to foreground the radically contextual and socially embedded nature of artistic production as well as to incorporate psychic and material notions of representation into the analysis of the political. I argue that such conceptual work is implicitly gendered, something made clearer by asking feminist questions about the function of memorial space in imagining publicity. To focus an interrogation, I investigate one disciplinary strain within cultural studies: theatre and performance studies. Throughout, I position performance – both theatrical and social – as an exemplary site with which to investigate the linguistic, spatial, and embodied practices of culture. Such forms expose the gendered operations of language, space and gesture as well. Furthermore, the field of performance studies has produced theoretical paradigms that derive from larger theories of memory and space. By thus positioning it as both a site of culture and a site of cultural theory, I argue that performance can illuminate the tacit gendering of culture more generally. My investigation of publicity and civic memorial will build upon three relatively recent examples of civic performance in Chicago: the performance of First Lady at the 1996 Democratic convention, the 1996 inauguration of the Jane Addams Memorial Park in Chicago, and the premiere of Chicago-born playwright David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood in 1997. I frame both Chicago theatre and other kinds of Chicago performances as different types of civic memorial in order to speculate on relationships amongst different types of genres. More importantly, I illustrate the different ways that women function allegorically and indirectly as vehicles for imagining publicity and for lamenting its failures. My examples suggest how women – living and/or memorialized, ethnically marked and unmarked – can figure paradoxically as the object blamed for the loss of extended affiliation even as (conversely) they are also blamed for its ‘unnatural’ public promotion.     

Empowering Lesbian and Gay Foster Adolescents Through Mentoring Relationships

This article discusses a mentoring model as a resource for lesbian and gay adolescents in foster care. Interview data collected in a national study of foster adolescent mentoring programs led to the identification of elements of succesful programs. The authors apply these elements to the design of a model mentoring program for lesbian and gay adolescents. Such a model program would help to alleviate problems that are related to isolation, stigmatization, and lack of positive lesbian and gay role models. Selected lesbian and gay youth vignettes are described and implications drawn for program development.     

Community struggles and the shaping of democratic consciousness

Grass-roots protest activities against economic growth have often been viewed as particularistic, random, self-interested actions that have little significant impact on the larger political economy or movements for social change. This article, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding these community conflicts by examining the structural contradictions of political life that frame such conflicts and by showing, through a case study of a toxic waste protest, the ways in which these structural contradictions are subjectively experienced in the process of political protest. This integrated analysis thus shows how ordinary citizens may develop a more active, participatory concept of democracy.     

Lesbians Grieving the Death of a Partner: Recommendations for Practice

ABSTRACT

Spousal loss is a common event that has been associated with risk of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Practitioners working with lesbians need comprehensive clinical guidelines that integrate research about lesbian partner loss with contemporary views of grief and bereavement. Using this literature, we make recommendations for clinical practice that address the possible contributions of several factors—social support, emotional closeness, relationship satisfaction, disclosure or non-disclosure of sexual identity and the relationship, faith and/or spirituality, and meaning-making—to the grieving process and positive psychological adjustment of lesbians grieving the death of a partner.     

Ritualizing the Routine: Collective Identity Affirmation

Groups use rituals to create and preserve collective identities. Separation of sacred practices from customary activities has long been considered a key property of ritual. However, customary activities form the basis of some ritual celebrations. We explain how a different process of identity creation results: identity affirmation. We find that groups affirm their customary practices on ritual occasions when they intend to celebrate practices already associated with the sacred, and we explain the structure of such rituals using a case study of a university centennial celebration. We argue that attention to variation in ritual casts light on the values and collective identity of groups.     

“Backstage Autonomy”: Religious-Zionist State Widows in Second Marriages Manage Competing Expectations

ABSTRACT

The article examines the coping mechanisms of state widows belonging to Israel’s Religious-Zionist sector, whose husbands died at an early age either during military service or in terrorist attacks. While the national bereaved community’s collective unconscious expects the widows to dedicate their lives to institutionalized commemoration of their dead husband, Jewish tradition expects them to remarry to rehabilitate their family and children. The widows who were studied seemed to manage the competing expectations successfully: they remarried and maintained a happy family life while entrusting commemoration to the bereaved parents, who are still part of their extended family. The findings point to successful manipulation of the patriarchy of both communities to which they belong, achieving individualization that offers freedom in the private sphere—what we call “Backstage Autonomy”—while perpetuating hegemony on the public level on the Front Stage.