Shifting visibilities: the social implications of a Roma aesthetic

ABSTRACT

This paper is a personal reflection by a Roma artist upon the mutual influence of Roma social relations and Roma visual culture. Strategies of art making are considered via analyses of contemporary Roma art works. It is suggested that historic marginalisation and continuing discrimination have determined the contingent nature of the Roma aesthetic resulting in keen facilities for adaptation and obscured visibility. Roma artefacts are shown to employ these resistant characteristics of Roma visuality to convey social, cultural, artistic and political agency via visual and performative means. The conclusion calls for a reconceptualisation of Roma visibilities so that we as Roma might forge new political unities and new forms of politics to more effectively challenge embedded Romaphobia.     

A means to an end: Using political satire to go viral

With the rise of video sharing giants like Youtube and Google Video, coupled with increased broadband connectivity and improved sharing functionality across social networking sites, the role of the viral video has been cemented in many IMC strategies. While most agree about the importance of better understanding viral marketing, there is less agreement about what makes content become viral. While some content gets viewed by millions of people, others struggle to gain viral traction. Content specific, intrapersonal and interpersonal reasons have been proposed for viral marketing success. This paper focuses on the intrapersonal reasons for content going viral in the context of political satire. More specifically, the role of emotion in the spread of content online, is investigated. Political satire focuses on gaining entertainment from politics. Satire, and specifically political satire, forms part of using humour in advertising and has been influential in shifting public opinion since ancient Greece. This study compares success and unsuccessful viral campaigns that used political satire, by first analysing the online comments that viewers made about the video. Following these findings, an experiment is conducted and the influence of intensity, creativity, humour and utility on virality is modelled, controlling for valence and previous exposure. The findings suggest that, when using political satire in viral campaigns, creativity and the intensity of the emotions felt are key influencing factors in whether videos get “shared” or “liked”. Therefore, while many authors contend that particular emotions or positive content has a greater likelihood to become viral, this paper shows that it is not the particular emotion, but the intensity with which that emotion was felt that drives viral success.     

Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

The landscape of political humor and satire is changing rapidly, and it is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of our culture. Although scholars have been actively trying to capture this change, majority of the existing frameworks for understanding humor and satire in politics still reduce these phenomena to mere genres or rhetoric tools. In addition, they provide insufficient accounts concerning the reception of humor and satire, and neglect to interpret and explain what they communicate. In the article, a general understanding of humor and satire outside of a political context, followed by an overview of studies discussing humor and satire in politics through their applications in social movements, as leadership tools, and through their manifestations in mass media has been presented. Lastly, a cultural sociological perspective to the field has been introduced. It has been argued that approaching humor and satire in politics through a structural hermeneutic method of the Strong Program will enable us to recognize and treat political humor and satire as autonomous and complex cultural systems which carry an internal power to move people.     

Watching The Daily Show in Kenya

Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprising. Kenyan viewers perceived in The Daily Show gaps between the rhetoric and reality of empire and pointed to limitations of Stewart's dissident satire as they rejected its depictions of non-wealthy nations and marginalized peoples. They reconfigured Daily Show episodes as commentaries on global power relations; reflected critically on Kenyan politics, media and their own political subjectivities; and revised their own earlier assumptions about the gap between Africa and supposedly ‘mature’ democracies such as the United States. Thus, American political satire such as The Daily Show can activate in foreign audiences new perceptions of differences between the ‘West’ and the rest and new forms of political imagination.     

Street art in non-capital urban centres: between exploiting commercial appeal and expressing social concerns

ABSTRACT

How do local cultural agents in particular places adopt new policies towards street art as having commercial and political value? The present article takes up this question through a discussion of street art festivals and their role within urban culture and cultural policies in two large Russian cities. It considers the activities of cultural intermediaries promoting street art vis-à-vis the existing constellation of over-centralized politics, creative industries, urban development and precarious labour. Drawing on fieldwork in these cities and conducting critical sociological analysis of the street art curating, I show how the appropriation of street art by cultural intermediaries is subtly changing its ecology and values and argue that this change contributes to the range of ambivalences of neoliberal cultural politics. The article also sheds light on cultural policy and practice in Russia at a juncture characterised by the impact of globalization, on the one hand, and the country's isolationist and conservative politics, on the other.     

Therapeutic politics: critique and contestation in the post-political conjuncture

ABSTRACT

This article addresses forms of political engagement in the therapeutic field. Drawing on ethnographic research on popular psychology self-help, alternative and complementary health practices and new spiritualities, the paper takes issue with the dominant interpretation of the therapeutic as a depoliticizing force. Although this interpretation captures important facets of the phenomenon, the paper suggests that something more complex is afoot. It argues that therapeutic practices may also animate political contestation and critique, and challenge the prevailing grammar of political conflict. It substantiates this argument by identifying two modalities of politics in the therapeutic field: collective mobilization through a political party, and therapeutic practices as a form of lifestyle politics. It goes on to suggest that, together, these modalities constitute a subaltern counterpublic politicizing the political economy of health and the erosion of democratic governance. The paper concludes by suggesting that analysis of the therapeutic field may shed light on the shifting logics of political contestation at the contemporary political conjuncture.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa

In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions. As has been the case in other post-authoritarian and postcolonial settings, the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up. This article interrogates the assumption that media are central to citizens’ political and civic engagements in a transitional society marked by persisting inequalities. This interrogation draws on empirical research with citizens to investigate the question that the media are central to constructions of citizenship and participation and engagement with democratic processes. Our research finds that young South Africans interviewed are disengaged from politics and find that the media does not speak to or connect with their everyday lives. They view the state on both national and local levels as not being prepared to listen to their experiences, ideas or conditions of life. While the respondents trust the media as credible institutions, they do not experience the media as being relevant to their lives. The perceived disinterest of the state and the lack of relevance of the media, work together to create a sense of powerlessness and inability to influence policy-making among the young people interviewed. For the media to intervene in this state of affairs, it would have to create more opportunities for young people to participate directly in meaning production through the media, starting by listening more closely to their experiences in order to respond to their concerns in a relevant way.     

Ephemeral and Ludic Strategies of Remembering in the Streets: A Springboard for Public Memory in Chile

This article examines a profound turn in the commemoration and representations of the dictatorial past in Chile (1973–1990), where young people who did not experience firsthand the authoritarian order are publicly creating fleeting images, practices, and objects to remember the military dictatorship. These are urban ephemeral and ludic mnemonic assemblages (Freeman, Nienass, and Daniell 2015) that connect past and present events and demand new ways of talking, acting, and thinking about the past, thereby appropriating the public space. The participants in these actions stress the original, carnivalesque, and public dimensions of their practices, challenging the official politics of memory that has focused on the recognition of victims within the walls of museums or memorials. The following question guides this article: How do new public, ludic, and ephemeral strategies interact with and potentially change official ways of narrating the past? How do they create the space for political participation in postconflict societies? Drawing upon a qualitative and multimethod study that combines 60 in‐depth interviews, participant observations, and archival work, I maintain that, although this blossoming of the Chilean public memory has opened up new territories for activating memory, it has a transient temporality and, consequently, may have transitory political potential.     

'I've Seen Changes'

Abstract

This article examines the political efficacy and effectiveness of American Indian and Hispanic women leaders in New Mexico. Using qualitative data from personal interviews with 50 grassroots activists and public officials involved in state, local, and/or tribal politics, I address the following research questions: Do American Indian and Hispanic grassroots activists and public officials perceive themselves as politically efficacious? How do their perceptions of efficacy differ? How effective are these activists and officials at influencing public policy and politics in New Mexico? The findings indicate that there are greater similarities among grassroots activists and public officials, as well as among Native and Hispanic women leaders, than might be expected from readings of classic political science literature. More importantly, while the majority of the leaders feel personally efficacious, there is substantial evidence of their impact both at the organizational level and in the larger political arena of state, local, and tribal politics.     

Youth political involvement update: measuring the role of cause-oriented political interest in young people's activism

In recent decades, a series of transformations have occurred that have changed young people's relationships with politics. In most Western countries, young people vote less and protest more. Survey research has detected this two-fold process in participation behaviour, but has failed to detect this same process in the field of political attitudes. In particular, the emergence of a specific dimension of psychological political involvement with a special impact on youth has gone unnoticed in survey-based research. Based on some recent qualitative studies, this research tries to identify and measure a specific dimension of interest in politics using a new question in a survey carried out in Catalonia in 2011. An interest directly oriented to political issues and causes – particularly those relevant in young people's everyday lives – is identified. The article also evaluates how traditional survey indicators of political involvement do capture, or not, this particular dimension of interest in politics. Finally, the new cause-oriented interest indicator is tested to analyse its impact on different types of participation in order to better understand patterns of activism in young people.     

Conservative Catholicism versus social Catholicism? Contrasting patterns in the political engagement of highly religious young Catholics in France and Italy

Current academic literature has proposed contrasting interpretations of the developments of youth religiosity. While some scholars have claimed increasing secularization of younger generations, others have noted the growing importance of religious values in young people's lives. To go beyond this debate, this article explores the restructuring of youth religiosity in Western European countries, characterized by the resilience of religion in secularized societies. With this purpose in mind, the article investigates the under-researched topic of the political activism of highly religious young Catholics and compares the political engagement of two recently established youth organizations: Sens Commun (SC) (rebranded Mouvement Conservateur, MC) in France and the Comunità di Connessioni (CdC) in Italy. Although both SC and CdC were founded by young Catholics, their engagement has followed diverging trajectories. While SC/MC's ideas and politics bear the imprint of conservative Catholicism, CdC's initiatives and values are inspired by social Catholicism. This article claims that the diverging trajectories of SC/MC and CdC are influenced by the long-lasting socio-historical factors that regulated the relations between religion, politics and civil society and the emerging post-secular reconfiguration that can open the way for a renewal of the forms of political engagement of young Catholics.     

Taking pleasure seriously: the political significance of subcultural practice

This paper demonstrates that subcultural theory continues to provide a relevant and useful analysis of youth leisure practices and their political significance in contemporary society. It achieves this by analysing the theoretical antecedents to both subcultural theory and the post-subcultural theory that followed it. It is argued that the post-subcultural turn to studying affects and everyday lives resonates deeply with the Gramscian perspective informing subcultural theory. It is thus possible to interpret post-subculturalism as augmenting rather than negating its predecessor. Deploying an analysis that combines these perspectives allows for an account of contemporary youth leisure practices that demonstrates a number of different forms of politics explicated within the paper: a politics of identity and becoming; a politics of defiance; a politics of affective solidarity and a politics of different experience. Whilst not articulated or necessarily conscious, there is a proto-politics to youth leisure that precludes it from being dismissed as entirely empty, hedonistic and consumerist. This paper demonstrates how the lens of post-subculturalism focuses on the affective spaces where this politics is most apparent and provides a means of updating subcultural theory to understand contemporary youth practices.     

In sickness and in health: The politics of public health and their implications during the COVID-19 pandemic

Politics is a major player in health, sickness, and death affairs. This article reviews the role of politics in public health and its impact on health outcomes, mortality ratios, and death scenarios amongst the most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the article explains the reasons behind the absence of politics from health and public health discourses; and examines the role of politics during the mis/management of COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Foucault's biopower, Mebmbe's necropolitics, and Butler's precarity, the article illuminates how public health policies are highly political insofar as they offer some individuals access to life but create possibilities of death for others. During COVID-19, politics enabled governors to put at risk the most vulnerable groups, the precariat, namely refugees, asylum seekers, stateless, and immigrants, the majority of whom were impoverished. The article presents COVID-19 as an example of a crisis that unmasks these politics, claiming that these politics are not new but rather a continuum of previous invisible policies that COVID-19 unmasked and intensified. The article describes how the politics of health entail privileging individuals with capital value who can benefit the state's interests and maintains its power.     

Youth,activism, and social movements

There has been considerable debate over the extent and role of young people's political participation. Whether considering popular hand‐wringing over concerns about declines in young people's institutional political participation or dismissals of young people's use of online activism, many frame youth engagement through a “youth deficit” model that assumes that adults need to politically socialize young people. However, others argue that young people are politically active and actively involved in their own political socialization, which is evident when examining youth participation in protest, participatory politics, and other forms of noninstitutionalized political participation. Moreover, social movement scholars have long documented the importance of youth to major social movements. In this article, we bring far flung literatures about youth activism together to review work on campus activism; young people's political socialization, their involvement in social movement organizations, their choice of tactics; and the context in which youth activism takes place. This context includes the growth of movement societies, the rise of fan activism, and pervasive Internet use. We argue that social movement scholars have already created important concepts (e.g., biographical availability) and questions (e.g., biographical consequences of activism) from studying young people and urge additional future research.     

“I'm going to do battle… I'm going to do some good”. Biographical trajectories,moral politics,and public engagement among highly religious young Catholics in Spain and Mexico

Public debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy-related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed “moral entrepreneurs.” Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.     

The success of the Cuban success story: Ethnicity,power, and politics

This article examines the convergence of various forces that constructed a public image of Cuban Americans in the United States as a politically united, socially homogeneous, and economically successful ethnic group. The claims that comprise the Cuban “success story” are not well‐grounded in an objective, empirical reality, but do reflect the historical interplay of power and politics locally, nationally, and internationally. The focus is on how politicians, the media and the civic elite construct images of reality, the processes that determine which images gain prominence in the public mind, and the ways in which the images, themselves, shape social and political outcomes. Metropolitan Miami provides the laboratory, but the analytical approach generates important insights for the study of ethnicity and the politics of identity more generally.     

Politics and Growth

Theories of growth have made progress in understanding the mechanisms of growth in economic terms. However, there is less understanding of the political processes that enable or obstruct these mechanisms. This article provides a four‐stage framework to clarify and analyse the connections between politics and growth: (i) discussing the basic conditions essential for growth; (ii) suggesting that whether or not these conditions emerge depends on specific forms of public‐private interaction; (iii) linking these relationships to the incentives facing those in political power and investors; and (iv) considering the factors at country level that may help to push incentives in a pro‐growth direction.     

Hidden in full view: the organization of public secrecy in Miéville’s The City and the City

ABSTRACT

In this article, we explore China Mieville’s novel The City and the City as a literary experiment for analyzing the dynamics of public secrecy. We explore public secrets as an intrinsic part of organizational life and as a framework for paying attention to the politics of organizing. First, we focus on the novel’s invention and use of the verb ‘unseeing’ to bring out the embodied and sensuous aspects of public secrecy as part of organizational processes. Second we unfold how, although the content of public secrets may turn out to be less spectacular than expected, it is exactly their mundaneness which is key to their political importance. This is important because in an increasingly disorganized and uncertain world, secrecy proliferates and the visibility of secrecy is often a strategic move to justify certain hidden actions.     

The History of the Social Constructions of Dönmes (Converts)*

This paper investigates the history of social constructions, principally conspiracy theories, about a crypto‐Jewish group, the Dönmes, in Turkey. It considers the socio‐political reasons for the conspiracy theories and their significance by analysing their contents in different periods. The findings suggest that the fluid identity of Dönmes makes them stranger figures, in a sociological sense, creates public mistrust and encourages conspiratorial explanations. Moreover, the study shows that the conspiracy theories surrounding Dönmes are also fed by the ontological insecurities of Turkish politics, and that conspiracy theories tend to have appeal for alienated groups during major social transformations.