Introduction: global knowledge and advocacy networks

As global and regional networks proliferate, one important aspect of their operations has been the exchange of knowledge, information and expertise. ‘Global knowledge networks’ have become important components of the global political economy. Within these networks key knowledge institutions and actors can be development agencies, foundations, think‐tanks, universities, consultancy firms as well as individual experts and academics. A primary mechanism for the spread of their knowledge has been through global and regional networks. The article evaluates first, concepts of networks, especially the epistemic community and transnational issue network frameworks; second, theories about international diffusion of ideas; and third, some of the literature on the links between ideas and politics. Control over knowledge and information is important to policy making. Additionally, the status and prestige associated with scholarly expertise and professional training is politically empowering for individual experts consulted or co‐opted into policy making. Yet, norms and values cannot be divorced from ‘scientific advice’ especially when knowledge gains greater impact through advocacy and alliance with societal forces.     

Campus politics,student societies and social media

The university campus has often been seen as an important site for the politicization of young people. Recent explanations for this have focused attention upon the role of the student union as a means to enable a ‘critical mass’ of previously isolated individuals to produce social networks of common interest. What is missing from these accounts, however, and what this article seeks to address, is how these factors actually facilitate the development of political norms and the active engagement of many students. Drawing upon qualitative data from three countries we argue that it is the milieu of the smaller student societies that are crucial for facilitating the habitus of the student citizen. They provide the space for creative development and performance of the political self, affiliations to particular fields and access to cultural and social capital. Moreover, we contend that these processes of politicization are increasingly enacted through social media networks that foreground their importance for developing political habitus in the future.     

Becoming independent: political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum

Sociological debates on youth engagement with electoral politics play out against a backdrop of supposed ‘decline’ in civic participation (e.g. Putnam 2000 , Norris, 2011 ), in turn contextualized by theories of individualization in ‘late’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity (Beck, Giddens). However, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter turnout among this youngest group, and was accompanied by apparently ongoing political engagement. We explored this engagement among a strategic sample of young ‘Yes’ voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Analysis of qualitative interview data generated an unanticipated finding; that interviewees narrated their political engagement biographically, articulated their referendum participation reflexively, and located their new political ideas, allegiances and actions in the context of their own transitions to ‘independent’ adulthood. This inspired us to rethink young people's political engagement in relation to youth transitions. Doing so enables a synthesis of divergent strands in the sociology of youth, and offers new insights into the combinations of ‘personal’ agentic and ‘political’ structural factors involved in young people's politicization.     

The missing politics of muscular liberalism

The article examines the idea of muscular liberalism, first invoked by David Cameron as a paradigm of assertive policymaking in opposition to ‘state multiculturalism’. The rhetoric of muscular liberalism is present across western Europe, but its political effects have not been convincingly explored. In scholarship on ethnic minority integration, a ‘stimulus–response model’ credits Muslim intransigence as the trigger for the muscular stance. Other commentators put muscular liberalism into a genealogical perspective but do little to consider the circumstances of its political deployment. Working towards an alternative account, the article examines two instances of muscular liberalism in Britain: the campaign against ‘Sharia Courts’ and the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair. Different from the concern with historical continuity or stable potentials of liberal normativity, it draws attention to political operations and strategic calculations that characterize the deployment of muscular liberalism in British politics.     

Associational links with home among Zimbabweans in the UK: reflections on long‐distance nationalisms

In this article, I provide an overview of the character of associations formed in Britain by Zimbabweans in the context of the mass exodus that gathered pace from the late 1990s. I discuss the politicization of the Zimbabwe diaspora, which infuses many aspects of associational life beyond specifically political organizations, and also emphasize the importance of Zimbabwean church fellowships. I offer an historical explanation for the strength of nationalism expressed in the diaspora and the absence of ‘translocal’ associations characteristic of other African diaspora groups, such as hometown associations, and explore reasons why burial societies, which have been centrally important for Zimbabwean migrants in other periods and contexts, are less prevalent in Britain. I build my argument on an historical discussion of continuities and changes in the associational forms characteristic of labour migrancy and urbanization within the southern African region. I emphasize the legacies of a strong segregationist settler state, the mobilizations and international solidarities of the protracted struggle for independence, the Christianization of elite African culture in Zimbabwe's cities, and the international politics of the recent multifaceted crisis. My discussion of the associational expression of ‘long distance nationalisms’ is based on interviews conducted in 2004–5, participation in diaspora meetings and events, and reading of diaspora media and websites. In the article I aim to highlight the specific social histories of association and the political context of diaspora formation, which are essential for understanding the nature of institutions connecting with home, and ideas about home itself.     

The lawyers’ war: states and human rights in a transnational field

While torture and assassination have not infrequently been used by states, the post 9/11 ‘war on terror’ waged by the US has been distinguished by the open acknowledgement of, and political and legal justifications put forward in support of, these practices. This is surprising insofar as the primary theories that have been mobilized by sociologists and political scientists to understand the relation between the spread of human rights norms and state action presume that states will increasingly adhere to such norms in their rhetoric, if not always in practice. Thus, while it is not inconceivable that the US would engage in torture and assassination, we would expect these acts would be conducted under a cloak of deniability. Yet rather than pure hypocrisy, the US war on terror has been characterized by the development of a legal infrastructure to support the use of ‘forbidden’ practices such as torture and assassination, along with varying degrees of open defence of such tactics. Drawing on first-order accounts presented in published memoirs, this paper argues that the Bush administration developed such openness as a purposeful strategy, in response to the rise of a legal, technological, and institutional transnational human rights infrastructure which had turned deniability into a less sustainable option. It concludes by suggesting that a more robust theory of state action, drawing on sociological field theory, can help better explain the ways that transnational norms and institutions affect states.     

(Re)politicizing global financial governance: what's ‘new’ about the ‘New International Financial Architecture’?

Abstract This article is a contribution to the (re)politicization of global financial governance currently underway in the interdisciplinary field of international political economy (IPE). Particular reference is made to the economistic and technicist discourse prevalent in the so‐called ‘New International Financial Architecture’ (NIFA) process. It is argued that a (re)politicized reading of global financial governance is enabled by a conceptualization of governance networks that combines the institutional focus of existing IPE research with a concern with the discursive dynamics of authority relations and that situates governance networks in the power relations, contestation, contradictions and reproduction of global finance. Claims to ‘newness’ regarding the NIFA process, made by both the ‘architects’ themselves and left unchallenged by the majority of IPE scholars, are also disputed. The NIFA process is shown to have continued the contested development of an exclusionary transnational neo‐liberal network of governance that first began to emerge in the mid‐1970s.     

‘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.     

Catching the ‘big fish’: The (ab)use of corruption‐related prosecutions across sub‐Saharan Africa

This analysis concerns the use of punitive actions to curb corruption. Propositions from the literature on corruption state that by prosecuting offenders for corruption‐related crimes and thus ending impunity, particularly among high‐level political figures (‘big fish’), a political culture of less corruption will evolve. This, however, hinges on there being no impunity and politicization of prosecutions. This study empirically assesses whether this condition holds in the sub‐Saharan African political context. A unique database on corruption‐related prosecutions at the level of ministers across Africa was compiled and patterns were found that suggest that prosecutions are indeed politicized and serve as a way to eliminate political rivals. These findings are a warning in the face of the international community's overly technical and apolitical approach to anti‐corruption in sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Multiplicity: anarchy in the mirror of sociology

ABSTRACT

Justin Rosenberg’s proposal of ‘multiplicity’ as a new grounding concept for IR aims at liberating the international from the perceived constraints of its dominant framing by Realism. Viewed from within the singular political entity, the international can only appear as absence and negativity, traditionally thematised in IR as ‘anarchy’. Recasting it instead as ‘multiplicity’, through a move from politics to sociology, is intended to change the understanding of the international from negative to positive: from conflict, tragedy and repetition to interaction, combination and development. This move, however, does not succeed in grasping the negativity of the international, and so as a result it remains within the limits that Realism enunciates: multiplicity complements anarchy sociologically rather than transcending it theoretically. A new concept of the international would result not from rejecting the negative in favour of the positive but from recognizing them as dialectically contained within each other.     

Social control and the policing of terrorism: foundations for a sociology of counterterrorism

Sociologists have by and large neglected the study of terrorism and counterterrorism. The continued relevance that terrorism may be expected to have in our era should stimulate the development of new sociological ideas. I propose a sociological perspective of the policing of terrorism that is conceptually informed by a neo-Weberian bureaucratization theory of police. The theory holds that antiterrorist efforts at the level of police rest on a formal-rational conception of the means and objectives of counterterrorism, although ideological and political sentiments on terrorism are very intense and divisive within and across national states. Social control and counterterrorism are complex realities, comprised of a multitude of dimensions which are not necessarily in tune with one another. High-profile terrorist incidents, such as the events of 9/11, lead to attempts by national governments and international governing bodies to re-direct police efforts against terrorism in function of political objectives. Yet, because the bureaucratization of modern police institutions is at an unprecedented high level, the theory predicts, police agencies will resist these (re-)politicization attempts to continue counterterrorism activities that rest on an efficiency-driven treatment and depoliticized understanding of terrorism.     

A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-first Century: ‘De-politicization’ of Ethnicity in China

All multiracial and multi-ethnic nations are confronted with the important issue of how to handle ethnic relations and of the role that government should play in guiding the direction of such relations. In viewing ethnic minorities, ‘culturalization’ has a tradition of thousands of years in China. Until the late Qing dynasty, that tradition resulted in a united-pluralistic polity with a huge population by assimilation and prosperous economy. Under the new historical conditions of the twentieth century, however, China has adopted the policies of the former USSR since the 1950s and given ethnic minorities more political emphasis, what is called the ‘politicization’ of ethnic minorities. This paper proposes that, in the twenty-first century, China should learn from its own historical heritage and the lessons of the US, the former USSR and other nations, and redirect its policy from ‘politicization’ to ‘culturalization’ of ethnic issues so as to strengthen national identity among its ethnic minorities. This new perspective might also be insightful to other multiracial or multi-ethnic nations around the world in the new century.     

Acknowledging and transcending ‘failure’: lifeworld possibilities and system constraints

In this article, we interrogate the concept of methodological ‘failures’ as they arise during fieldwork, in the process of collecting empirical data. We highlight how the techniques of validity horizon matrices and power analysis can be used as methodological tools to illustrate moments in the fieldwork process where these ‘failures’ occur and to illustrate what makes them ‘failures’ rather than just opportunities for learning. Drawing on examples from our own research, we use validity horizon matrices to suggest that ‘failures’ largely occur as a result of disagreements about backgrounded, implicit normative claims. We distinguish between ‘failures’ where communicative possibilities exist for negotiating norms and those where systemic constraints make critique impossible, though we acknowledge that in practice opportunities for negotiating power are limited.     

Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn

In this paper we outline a critique of ‘decorative sociology’ as a trend in contemporary sociology where ‘culture’ has eclipsed the ‘social’ and where literary interpretation has marginalized sociological methods. By the term ‘decorative sociology’ we mean a branch of modernist aesthetics which is devoted to a politicized, textual reading of society and culture. Although we acknowledge slippage between the textual and material levels of cultural analysis, notably in the output of the Birmingham School, we propose that the intellectual roots of cultural studies inevitably mean that the textual level is pre‐eminent. In emphasizing the aesthetic dimension we seek to challenge the political self‐image of decorative sociology as a contribution to political intervention. We argue that while the cultural turn has contributed to revising approaches to the relationships between identity and power, race and class, ideology and representation, it has done so chiefly at an aesthetic level. Following Davies (1993), we submit that the greatest achievement of the cultural turn has been to teach students to ‘read politically’. The effect of this upon concrete political action is an empirical question. Without wishing to minimize the political importance of cultural studies, our hypothesis is that, what might be called the ‘aestheticization of life’ has not translated fully into the politicization of culture. We argue that an adequate cultural sociology would have to be driven by an empirical research agenda, embrace an historical and comparative framework, and have a genuinely sociological focus, that is, a focus on the changing balance of power in Western capitalism. We reject the attempt to submerge the social in the cultural and outline the development of an alternative, integrated perspective on body, self and society. We conclude by briefly commenting on three sociological contributions to the comparative and historical study of cultural institutions which approximate this research agenda: Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Sennett.     

Ethno-cultural diversity and the limits of the inclusive nation

ABSTRACT

Migration is often said, in the public discourse, to pose a threat to the nation. Yet, Western societies are undergoing an irreversible demographic change spurred in great part by international migration. Thus, the question about how to reconcile nation and diversity remains of crucial importance for many countries. By focusing on the case of Italy, the article attends to this issue, by exploring the response of leftist political parties. We analyse parliamentary debates and laws related to immigration and integration issues (1986–2014), focusing specifically on the Turco-Napolitano Law (1998), possibly the most progressive legislative attempt at incorporating migrants into the Italian nation. Our analysis shows a clear incongruence between the pluralist rhetoric of the political left and its legislative acts on migrants’ national incorporation. This finding is used to reflect on the limits and possibilities of the very idea of inclusive nation in the age of migration.     

Transformative capacity, information technology, and the making of business 'experts'

This paper explores the making of experts and the basis of claims to expertise in corporate organisational settings. The performance of expertise within organisations is increasingly associated with the implementation and use of integrated business information systems which purport to abstract the world into an informational form to make businesses run more efficiently. We argue that as these systems are put to work to replace the calculations of human experts, we are required to rethink how expertise is constituted as a political and performative process. We focus on the provisos and qualifications that surround the use of calculative techniques and the worries and scepticism over the correctness, accuracy and interpretation of numbers and figures derived from systems of calculation. Rather than identifying expertise as the capacity to make calculations and to abstract ‘representations’ from the ‘real world’, a job increasingly done by information systems, we find expertise being performed in the transformation of things of different orders which enables representations to be returned to the world through allusions to their transformative effect.     

The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer: Migration and Detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand

Abstract This paper looks at aspects of the detention of irregular migrants in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The principle intention of the paper is to study detention of irregular migrants as a means of understanding politics and how notions of political participation and of sovereignty are affected by the detention of certain sorts of individual. What does the identification of certain “forms of life” to be detained say about the political norms of different societies? The conduit for this examination will be the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's concept of homo sacer. Homo sacer is a term Agamben extrapolates from “ancient Roman law”. It denotes a naked or bare life that is depoliticized. Homo sacer is the excess of processes of political constitution that create a governable form of life. Homo sacer is thus exempt or excluded from the normal limits of the state. At the same time, however, homo sacer is not simply cast out but is held in particular relation to the norm: it is through the exclusion of the depoliticized form of life that the politicized norm exists. This essay seeks to contextualize aspects of Agamben's argument by looking at detention as a form of exclusion in three different contexts.     

British Muslims and the UK government's ‘war on terror’ within: evidence of a clash of civilizations or emergent de‐civilizing processes?

In the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on America, defending civilization was quickly established at the core of the ‘war on terror’. Unintentionally or otherwise this incorporation of civilization connected with Samuel Huntington's ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis. Within the ‘war on terror’ the dark side of counterterrorism has become apparent through international practices like extrajudicial killing, extraordinary rendition and torture. The impact of Western governments' policies upon their indigenous Muslim populations has also been problematic but social and political analysis has been relatively limited. This paper seeks to help address the scarcity of sociological contributions. Hidden costs of the UK government's attempts to utilize violence and enhance social constraints within the nation‐state are identified. It is argued that although counterterrorism strategies are contributing to a self‐fulfilling spiral of hatred that could be considered evidence in support of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, the thesis is unhelpful when trying to grasp the underlying processes. Instead the paper draws upon Norbert Elias's application of the concepts of ‘civilizing’ and ‘de‐civilizing’ to help improve levels of understanding about the processes and consequences of particular Muslim communities being targeted by security forces. The paper concludes with an exploration of the majority of the population's acquiescence and willingness to accept restraints upon Muslims in order to safeguard their own security.     

Procedural monsters: rhetoric,commonplace and ‘heroic madness’ in video games

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on Ian Bogost’s argument that video games constitute a form of ‘procedural rhetoric’, in order to re-examine the representation of heroic madness First-Person-Shooter games. Rejecting the idea that games attempt to recreate the experience of madness to the player through linear representation, the paper instead identifies two persistent commonplace figures which appear within the genre: the monstrous double, and the reaching tentacle. While Bogost’s notion of procedural rhetoric allows analysis to move away from the more facile interpretations of gameplay, the paper argues that these figures also demand an account of the commonplace itself – the rhetorical ‘topic’ – which links the technical structure of gaming procedures with the tropes and figures that enable them to make sense within their wider cultural context and tradition. While the figures of the double and the tentacle purposefully draw on existing tropes and processes associated with the cultural meanings of mental health, a rhetorical analysis of their use of commonplaces suggests that they are not simply recycling older clichés, but constitute a creative ‘reobjectification’ of madness.     

Decentering technology in discourse on discrimination*

ABSTRACT

Algorithmic discrimination has become one of the critical points in the discussion about the consequences of an intensively datafied world. While many scholars address this problem from a purely techno-centric perspective, others try to raise broader social justice concerns. In this article, we join those voices and examine norms, values, and practices among European civil society organizations in relation to the topic of data and discrimination. Our goal is to decenter technology and bring nuance into the debate about its role and place in the production of social inequalities. To accomplish this, we rely on Nancy Fraser’s theory of abnormal justice which highlights interconnections between maldistribution of economic benefits, misrecognition of marginalized communities, and their misrepresentation in political processes. Fraser’s theory helps situate technologically mediated discrimination alongside other more conventional kinds of discrimination and injustice and privileges attention to economic, social, and political conditions of marginality. Using a thematic analysis of 30 interviews with civil society representatives across Europe’s human rights sector, we bring clarity to this idea of decentering. We show how many groups prioritize the specific experiences of marginalized groups and ‘see through’ technology, acknowledging its connection to larger systems of institutionalized oppression. This decentered approach contrasts the process-oriented perspective of tech-savvy civil society groups that shy from an analysis of systematic forms of injustice.