From ‘for’ to ‘of’: a typology of Maltese disability organisations

The main aim of this article is to adapt the Typology of Disability Organisations that Oliver devised, and subsequently developed further in 1990, to a different context, in this case the Maltese disability sector. The paper first traces the history of the disabled people’s movement and presents Oliver’s Typology, which makes a clear distinction between organisations for and of disabled persons. The article then highlights the main characteristics of the Maltese disability sector and develops the Typology of the organisations operating within that sector. It shows how it is non-disabled people that are mostly in control of disability organisations, and suggests ways in which there can be a stronger movement towards the development and strengthening of disabled people’s organisations. The article shows how Oliver’s Typology can be used flexibly and adapted to various contexts. It also shows how drawing up a Typology of Disability Organisations can shed light on the environment within which these organisations operate, identifying areas of strength and possible areas for growth.     

‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of neurodiversity’ in neoliberal times

The neurodiversity movement claims that there are neurological differences in the human population, and that autism is a natural variation among humans – not a disease or a disorder, just ‘a difference’. A ‘politics of neurodiversity’ is based on the claim that the ‘neurodiverse’ population constitutes a political grouping comparable with those of class, gender, sexuality or race. This paper considers the limits and possibilities of neurodiverse political activism, and concludes by calling for a politics of identity that does not depend on a politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’.     

‘Freedom Narratives’ of Transatlantic Slavery

It is argued that what have usually been called ‘slave narratives’ sometimes more accurately describe ‘freedom narratives’, especially when individuals who had regained their freedom wrote or dictated such accounts. Most stories that are associated with slavery often focus on the quest for and achievement of freedom through escape, self-purchase or other means. Moreover, it is argued here that there is a distinction between narratives composed by individuals who had once been free in Africa and those who were born into slavery in the Americas. By focusing on the lives of four individuals, Venture Smith, Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano), Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu, this article assesses the importance of regaining lost freedom as a motive in compiling the narratives and life histories of these individuals. Smith, Vassa and Baquaqua left autobiographical accounts of their lives, while Kaba left a significant paper trail that allows a study of his life, moving from freedom in Africa to slavery and then emancipation in Jamaica. Mediated by the ‘Middle Passage’, these texts demonstrate a consciousness of lost freedom and the importance of re-achieving that status, however contested and understood.     

The making of ‘real men’

This article considers the legacy of Enlightenment and Empire in settler society as a conflict of cultural values,at once a problem of justice and identity. Aotearoa/New Zealand is an exemplary case: the failure of the court system to fully acknowledge that settlement was founded on negotiation with indigenous people threatens to return this society, in constitutional and social terms, to a state of nature. I consider the problem raised by the claims to justice of indigenous Maori through the viewpoint of a major historian, and white New Zealander or Pakeha, J. G. A. Pocock. The progressivism of enlightenment history still evident in his thinking undergirds a view of Maori history as a primitive dreamtime. This misconception belies the refusal of Pakeha to acknowledge the extent to which their own view of history is a product of enlightenment myth-making. The negative British view of Maori in the nineteenth century shows the continuity of racial stereotypes since Captain Cook's encounter. Today, the judicial failure to countenance different cultural values reorients questions of justice. The state of nature returns as the absence of a constitutional framework for negotiating specifically cultural differences. The abstract universalism of liberal justice – Pakeha think justice cannot be culturally inflected – is part of the problem, and fuels Maori grievances. Yet Pakeha are increasingly turning to Maori insignia to establish a sense of national identity. Historical justice and questions of national identity remain inseparable in settler societies. The failure to consider settlement in terms of competing cultural values, evident in the problem of history, creates the conditions for an uncivil society. In this context I question the grounds for regarding acts of indigenous violence as unjustified.     

‘Indigenous Rights’ or ‘Racial Privileges’: The Rhetoric of ‘Race’ in New Zealand Politics

The New Zealand parliamentary election campaign of 2005 was marked by a significant break in the consensus between the two major political parties, Labour and National, in the area of Maori affairs: a consensus that had previously been articulated in terms of a shared commitment to ‘biculturalism’ and the Treaty of Waitangi. In January 2004, the National Party launched an attack on government policies, describing them as giving unfair privileges to Maori based purely on ‘race’. The present paper examines the National Party's adoption of the rhetoric of ‘race’ and the conceptual, political and ideological considerations behind it. It also examines attitudinal, social policy and socioeconomic factors to explain the widespread acceptability of this rhetoric among the New Zealand public. These events are considered within the context of a growing academic and political critique of ‘culturalism’ in New Zealand social policy and social science.     

Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’: intersections of ethnicity and violence in the lives of youth of ‘mixed’ heritage

This article looks at young Rwandans of ‘mixed’ Hutu–Tutsi heritage, exploring how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda. It reveals the complex position of these young ‘Hutsi’ and the significant constraints they face in exercising identity choices in a context with a history of ethnic violence and where state policies have outlawed ethnicity. This article argues that the experiences, narratives and performances of these young Rwandans simultaneously challenge and reinforce the binary ‘ethnic logic’ that persists in contemporary Rwanda. Yet it suggests that providing space for Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’ and their diverse experiences could help to de-essentialize the categories ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ and reduce the risks of future violence.     

The shifting ‘stages’ of performance: a study of ‘Chavang Kut’ festival in Manipur

Chavang Kut, a post-harvesting festival in Manipur, represents an important cultural expression of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo group of people. The article looks at the participation of the Thadou community in the celebration by tracing their performative historiography. In the past, the celebration was primarily important in the religio-cultural sense. The rhythmic movements of the dances in the festival were inspired by animals, agricultural techniques and showed their relationship with ecology. Today, the celebration witnesses the shifting of stages and is revamped to suit new contexts and interpretations. The traditional dances which forms the core of the festival is now performed in the out-of-village settings and are staged in a secular public sphere. While used by the state as a political project to bring unity amongst the different communities of Manipur, recent socio-political occasions showed how it is used as a site of contestations against the state.     

Weaving the Diverse ‘Seeds’ of Knowledge

Inspiration in the journey through my academic career has come from diverse sources and been enriched through continual reflection. The disciplines of anthropology and human ecology have been only one source of ideas. The other source of enrichment is the domain of local knowledge—the product of the local people's struggles to stay alive in a changing environment. Through hard work they strive for improved prosperity and a more sustainable environment; from them I learned the meaning of life.

M. Junus Melalatoa's ethnographic poem entitled Cipayung Petang (1987) in Winarto & Sulistiawati 2006, p. 35) appropriately represents my reflection:

Mana lebih bahagia What makes us happier

memandang petani to see the farmer

dari balik kaca from behind the window glass

atau berkaca pada petani or to reflect through the farmer

tentang diri kita. on ourselves     

‘Power Differences’ and ‘the Power of Difference’: The Dominance of Secularism as Ontological Injustice

Abstract

Recent religious studies and international relations scholarship has highlighted secularism as a critical element in dominant modes of identity, power, and exclusion in global politics. Yet, the implications of these insights for global justice theory and practice have rarely been considered. This article suggests that the current dominance of secularism within global justice theory and practice risks undermining the global justice project. Specifically, I argue that secularism’s dominance constitutes an ontological injustice, where both alternative non-secular visions of the world and visions of alternative non-secular worlds are subordinated to secular ontologies. However, this argument raises a crucial question: if, despite secularism’s claim to neutrality and universality, the dominance of secular ontologies contributes to rather than ameliorates injustice, the question that remains is: what are the alternatives? The article concludes by exploring some preliminary responses to this question.     

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.     

‘So few of us and so many of them’

Public protest against the Persian Gulf War in 1990–1 was only part of the story of US American women's resistance to war in general and to that war specifically. Although the gendering of war is seldom discussed outside feminist scholarship, the events of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath as well as all events and processes having to do with war are gendered events and processes. Both women and men participate in war in various ways, some of which, particularly in the case of women, are either not noticed, are deliberately ignored or made invisible. In this essay, the stories of some women who protested the Persian Gulf War are represented alongside questions that their narratives prompted about what constitutes anti-war work, and what the ramifications of such work are in the present international context.     

Looking beyond ‘buildings of chrome and glass’: Hong Kong’s ‘uncanny postcoloniality’ in photographs of Tin Shui Wai

Hong Kong has a unique postcolonial identity. After being colonised by Britain for over a century and a half, it was ceremoniously handed over to China in 1997, without necessitating any bloody wars or even skirmishes. Hong Kong has continued to enjoy a privileged status within China due to the doctrines enshrined in the ‘one country two systems’ policy. She has benefited from becoming part of a nation with the fastest growing economy in the world, and the people of Hong Kong have for the most part acquiesced to the reduction in levels of political freedom. However, recent events like the Umbrella Movement spearheaded mainly by student protesters has brought to the fore the cracks in Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity and the city finds itself once again precariously poised in a moment of transition.

Theorising a connection between Hong Kong’s postcolonial predicament and the city state’s physical landscape, I analyse Hong Kong photographer Derrick Chang’s photos of Tin Shui Wai, a remote new town located on Hong Kong’s northwestern edge. Tin Shui Wai is a failed new town – it was developed to house workers who would serve the industries that were projected to develop there in the 1990s. However, these labour-intensive industries never materialised due to the meteoric rise of Guangdong’s manufacturing industry. Instead Tin Shui Wai has now come to be known as the ‘city of sadness’, notorious for its gruesome murders, high rate of domestic abuse and tragic suicides. Through an analysis of Chang’s photographs of Tin Shui Wai depicting isolation, stagnation and urban detritus, this article argues that the uncanny, spectral spaces of encounter raise questions and provide an alternative and more disquieting narrative of Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity.     

Women’s Experiences with Infertility: The Fluidity of Conceptualizations of ‘Family’

In this study, I examine women’s experiences with infertility and the impact upon their conceptualizations of ‘family.’ Active interviews with 32 women revealed most women started out with conceptualizations that reflected a traditional ideology of family. Participants who conceived biological children through medical assistance expressed a broader conceptualization of family through a greater appreciation for their children and family life in general. Women who did not conceive, despite medical assistance to do so, also discussed broadening their conceptualizations so that ‘family’ took on new meanings, structures, and/or significance. Conceptually, the analysis shows how notions of family are not static, but rather a fluid process subject to interpretation and re-evaluation as a result of life events, in this case, encounters with infertility.     

Adult dyslexia and the ‘conundrum of failure’

While there is a wealth of literature about childhood dyslexia, adult dyslexia remains relatively undocumented, particularly from a lived perspective. This paper focuses on the ‘deficit perspective of failure’, as highlighted in current literature, which addresses issues confronting adults with dyslexia. Within this theme of failure a number of subtypes have been identified. This paper contextualises these subtypes around the perceptions of individuals involved in a tertiary course for adults with dyslexia. The paper demonstrates what the author has identified as a ‘conundrum of failure’ that has influenced the perceptions of many adults with dyslexia, including their life choices. Its prevalence in the literature and the lived experiences of the research subjects highlight the need for societal, institutional and attitudinal change.     

Strategic Planning in the ‘Empire of Speed’

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the latest wave of the social acceleration of time on the capacity for long-term strategic planning within contemporary global justice movements. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary body of literature on time and temporality, the article begins by delineating the changes to the future time perspective wrought by the shift from the modern ‘age of progress’ ruled by ‘clock time', to a global ‘network society’ characterized by speed, risk, and uncertainty. In the second, substantive part, the article draws upon several dozen semi-structured interviews with social activists in order to shed light upon the challenges to contemporary social justice movements posed by the pervasive sense of precarity and futurelessness associated with life in high-speed, global risk society.