The Dutch reformed churches as vehicles of political legitimation in South Africa

This paper argues the importance of Dutch Reformed theology for the legitimization of National Party rule and for justification of White dominance in South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Churches have never proposed a single identification between election and racial or ethnic identity, legitimization has been sought rather through the cosmic pluralism of Abraham Kuyper and H. G. Stoker. Where Kuyperianism has proven unacceptable for theological reasons, Afrikaner Churchmen have had regress to the theologically suspect notion of the volkskerk. On the institutional, as opposed to the theological level, it is argued that Dutch Reformed churches in cooperation with the Afrikaner Broederbond have provided a major informal bulwark for National Party rule in South Africa. The paper suggests in conclusion that the National Party has elaborate theoretical justification for pragmatic racism, at the same time the Dutch Reformed churches have been rent by dissent about their theological legitimation of Afrikaner domination.     

The Perception of Societal Models of Power Distribution by Recent Male College Graduates

Abstract

This study examines the perception of power among young adult males. A sampleof 1971 male graduates of a state university were asked in 1974 to choose from among pluralistic and elitist models of power in the U.S. The correlates of the various perceptions of power were elaborated using political attitudes, degree of political activism, change in political beliefs, locus of control, and status inconsistency. The findings were that: (1) the respondents tended to perceive an elitist model, although they preferred a pluralist model; and (2) those most likely to perceive power in elitist terms were activists, those with changed political beliefs, those most status inconsistent, and those with external locus of control.     

Kultuur Reclaimed: Afrikaner Nationalist Politics and the Stellenbosch District (South Africa), 1934–1939

Abstract This article challenges the notion that Afrikaner nationalism was underpinned by Afrikaner Unity. Focusing on the University town of Stellenbosch between 1934 and 1939 it explores the extreme fluidity of Afrikaner nationalist politics during this period, demonstrating the multiplicity of identities, and conflicting and co-existing ideologies, which these politics comprised. The contested nature of Afrikaner nationalism in the period after the formation of Malan's “Purified” National Party in 1934 is illuminated through an examination of the debates within the Stellenbosch constituency over the true nature of the Afrikaner. Contestations over Afrikaans Kultuur (culture) were a key element of politics in Stellenbosch during this period, as Nationalist politicians and their supporters sought to “reclaim” control over “their” cultural icons.     

‘To Infinity and Beyond…’: The American Vernacular and Democratic Space

Abstract

The spatial strategies adopted by the founding fathers of the American Republic are examined and their political roots and consequences explored. In particular the reasons for the neo-classical style becoming prominent are questioned, and whether that style was an appropriate spatial strategy for democratization. An analysis is presented of how American writing and literature was a forum for the working out of the questions of expansion into, and settlement in, new space.     

Family violence: Multiple levels of assessment and intervention

Abstract

Violence in the family is examined as a political, social and practice issue. The literature is reviewed with attention to varying views on the aetiology of violence in the family, including psychological, social and political perspectives. Suggesting an integrated psychosocial perspective, the author proposes concepts of power, powerlessness and effectance as useful explanatory notions in understanding the violent moment. Implications for intervention are suggested.     

What’s Wrong with Us? Sexual Misconduct and the Discipline of Political Science

ABSTRACT

Sexual misconduct matters not only when it is perpetuated by political actors in political institutions. It matters wherever it happens and whomever it happens to, because it is, at its base, political. Politics is fundamentally about power: who gets what, when, and how. As political scientists it should be at the heart of what we study, but it isn’t. Our discipline creates artificial (and somewhat arbitrary) boundaries about which studies of politics count as meaningful research and which do not. We discourage research that explores more expansive notions of how politics is practiced in broader society. As academics we have the luxury of speaking out. I argue here that political scientists ought to embrace an expansive definition of politics to address the real questions of power, its abuse in our society and in our profession.     

Spectres of Afrikanerdom in contemporary commodity culture: history,memory, and imagining the self

The centrality of nostalgia in contemporary Afrikaner culture is contingent on the gradual demotion of Afrikaner history in post-apartheid South Africa. This article, however, departs from the view that such recapitulations of the past are necessarily always intransigent. Casting Afrikaner nostalgia as manifesting dissatisfaction with the government is ultimately not representative of the diverse spectres of Afrikanerdom that haunt selected commodity items, such as the t-shirts discussed in this article. If we allow for a melange of narratives and interpretations to emerge, as a postmodern view of history would encourage, it enables us to challenge a one-dimensional view of Afrikaner nostalgia. This article therefore posits that specific nostalgic imaginings of Afrikanerdom are decidedly self-reflexive and progressive. Instead of attempting to reify the past (together with irrecoverable positions of power), some of the discourses addressed in this article reveal Afrikanerdom’s capacities for appropriation, aestheticisation and commodification, which open up new possibilities for thinking about Afrikaner subjectivity in post-apartheid South Africa.     

“Are We Afrikaners Getting too Rich?”1 Cornucopia and Change in Afrikanerdom in the 1960s

Abstract This article attempts to correlate the unprecedented economic growth of the 1960s in South Africa with shifts in patterns of consumption, attendant lifestyle changes and forms of status identification among Afrikaners. Moreover the subsequent divergences in Afrikaner nationalist politics and the demise of apartheid are explored in terms of the rise of the Afrikaner middle-class as one, hitherto largely unexamined, factor in the political transition in South Africa during the 1990s.     

The Haemophilia Society

Abstract

A popular feminist principle in community work emphasises egalitarian relations between women. The ‘false equality trap’ of sisterhood has been highlighted recently through demonstrating women's different experiences of gender oppression. However, in making experiential diversity the starting point for practice it is possible to overlook power relations. A gendered relations perspective keeps the relations between men and women to the fore, while not precluding relative power differences between women. This perspective ensures that political institutions and practices become targets for change. In contrast, experiential diversity necessitates individual empowerment work and collective action based on local and unique circumstances. This perspective may encourage strategies which are inward-looking and which sidestep mainstream political institutions. Feminist community work needs to be judged according to its contribution to constraining the reproduction of patriarchal power relations. Feminist-inspired community development must operate in tandem with social action, policy reform, prefigurative strategies and above all, political reform.     

Women Political Leaders

Abstract

This article thoroughly examines women prime ministers and presidents (also referred to as women executives) rigorously comparing nearly all cases of women executives from 1960 through 2002. The numbers of women executives, countries they have led, and the types of governmental systems in which they came to power are analyzed. A main focus is their political and educational backgrounds. Findings suggest that the number of women making it to executive office is few but varied geographically. Women executives have diverse education and political backgrounds. An important springboard to office in Asia and Latin America has been women's familial ties to important political leaders. Even these women are more diverse than expected in terms of background and, in particular, political experience.     

American Studies in the time of Empire

Abstract

This article argues that in terms of political economy, political/military power, and culturally, the USA is 'worlded' in two important ways. In terms both of power and self-perception, the national space of the USA is no longer contained within the boundaries indicated on political maps, but has come to encompass the globe, projecting the nation onto a global space. At the same time, intensified population flows into the USA – part of the same process – 'worlds' the USA from within, transforming American society. These contemporary developments need not be projected upon the past, but they do enable us to see the past in different ways – with colonialism integral to the US national formation both in North America and elsewhere. The article suggests on these grounds that an American-centered view of the USA, understanding the US as a sui generis formation is insufficient to understand the US past or present; such an understanding requires constant attention to the entanglement of the USA in the world and of the world in the USA.     

Explaining Gender Gaps in Legislative Committees

ABSTRACT

Legislative committees are often the epicenter of parliamentary influence, so their composition matters. Men are widely overrepresented in prestigious, influential committees, with women concentrated in low-status committees. These gender gaps have repercussions for power, visibility, careers, and policy outcomes. Yet the puzzle of why committees are gendered remains unsolved. Combining insights from quantitative and qualitative methods, we offer two major advances. We develop the literature on committee allocations, providing the first comprehensive gendered analysis. And we show how gender permeates all aspects of political careers from socialization to the political summit, leading to deep-rooted inequalities of power, influence, and opportunity.     

Power play: the use of space to control and signify power in the workplace

ABSTRACT

The findings of this article emerge from an eight-month study examining career identity practices amongst a select group of fitness professionals in the U.K. We examine how the inter-relationship between physical and social space can denote how power is acquired, displayed, and used by individuals interacting in a shared space. The findings show that power is signified through spatial practices as individuals negotiate through triadic space, creating an identity of space and place for both trainer and client that identifies power, and signifies who has power. Fitness professionals with high levels of symbolic power are able to subvert organizational spatial norms to better serve themselves and their clients, while those with lower levels of symbolic power are forced to, or choose to, negotiate or abdicate space to others. These findings are relevant to a wide range of occupations where self-employment and contract workers interact in shared space.     

Repression,resistance and lifestyle: charting (dis)connection and activism in times of accelerated capitalism

ABSTRACT

Studying the nexus of media and social movements is a growing subfield in both media and social movement studies. Although there is an increasing number of studies that criticize the overemphasis of the importance of media technologies for social movements, questions of non-use, technology push-back and media refusal as explicit political practice have received comparatively little attention. The article charts a typology of digital disconnection as political practice and site of struggle bringing emerging literatures on disconnection, i.e. forms of media technology non-use to the field of social movement studies and studies of civic engagement. Based on a theoretical matrix combining questions of power, collectivity and temporality, we distinguish between digital disconnection as repression, digital disconnection as resistance and digital disconnection as performance and life-style politics. The article discusses the three types of digital disconnection using current examples of protest and social movements that engage with practices of disconnection.

Abbreviations: AFA: Anti-Fascist Action; CHRI: Center for Human Rights in Iran; DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service     

The power to transform? Mexico’s ‘Fourth Transformation’ under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

ABSTRACT

We engage in a conjunctural analysis of political change (Gramsci; Hall), power (Lukes) and transformation (Polanyi) to inquire into López Obrador’s political project; ‘The Fourth Transformation’ from July 2018 until December 2019. We analyse characteristics and consequences of the use of power by López Obrador as concerns the ‘power to do what?’ in the name of the 4T, shadowed by structural constraints. Additionally, inquiring the paradox of neoliberal ideas underlying changes in the Federal Public Administration in the name of austerity and the fight against corruption. We conclude that López Obrador is not exploiting this historical conjuncture to bring about ‘the primacy of politics over economics,’ and that signs have yet to emerge of a comprehensive transformation of the neoliberal economic foundations, from a structural analysis perspective. The paradox of neoliberal ideas underlying the 4T is coupled with a peculiar, backward-looking vision for national transformation; a ‘retro-formation’ in the making.     

New politics and satire: the Euro financial crisis and the one-finger salute

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the conventional conceptualization in political science of politics is problematic, that it is overly narrow and constrained. This is because it excludes a range of actions like satire and humour which have come to play an increasing role in inspiring and provoking powerful political emotions and in informing the political agenda. Drawing on the work of critical scholars, it is argued that emotion, ethics and art can be deeply political. Moreover, new forms of media have encouraged new–old forms of political action often at the hands of young people who hitherto have been marginalized from the public sphere. Digital technology enables the production of user-generated content, opening new spaces for information, the exchange of ideas and mobilization. This article highlights the work of the young German satirist Jan Böhmermann to demonstrate how expressive art is playing a major role in shaping public opinion, in contesting power elites and informing political debate. In short, I use Böhmermann’s 2015 satire depicting Greco-German relations in the midst of a financial crisis and fears of loan defaults to argue for a broader understanding of politics that is inclusive of activities conventionally deemed non-rational.     

Releasing the full transformative power of feminism

ABSTRACT

In the current political situation - with the crisis of democracy, shrinking civic spaces and dominant repression along with the rise of right-wing political movements, the current article aims to show the powerful roles feminisms play in the struggles of social movements. It focuses on the aspect of power, domination, authority, neoliberal forces and systems of oppression in order to propose alternative models based on concrete experiences from the ground of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchy actions. Stories from Rojava, Kenya, and the Basque country; interviews; and literature review are used to show how women's efforts to achieve a balance of power and inclusion in decision-making is shifting the models of leadership, forcing changes in law and putting women at the centre of social movements by advocating for a change in social relations. All these interconnections propose a process of democratization as a tool for radical social change by delivering decision-making back to women and people.     

Maze of Resistance: Crowd,Space and the Politics of Resisting Subjectivity

Abstract

In 1968 the streets around the world saw a rise of a mass political movements. Nowadays, 46 years later, a nostalgic revolutionary aura surrounds that time; as since, such is the impression, the street is yet to emerge as a strong political actor or an effective practice of resistance is yet to take form. It seems as if the old ways of resistance have met their end, and new ways have not quite come in place. However, the most recent protests, as this paper aims to show, might have started a new path of resistance at the centre of which is a particular political subjectivity gaining its power from a space of resistance and appearing in a form of a ‘crowd’. By looking at the power of the crowd as a particular embodiment or a cross between a political subject and a multitude this paper explores the constituent power of political gatherings by rejecting race, ethnicity, religion, class or gender as their mobilizing force and instead focusing on the power of coming-together (common) in a particular space. The political capacity of such ‘common’ mobilising force was fully exposed in the recent protests across Europe and the Arab world (the two examples on which this paper draws). The paper opens with a discussion of the distinct relationship between the sovereign (or state) and political subjectivity. The constitutive moment of subjectivity (the self-other relation) is placed in a political context and by drawing on the examples of sans papiers and Bouazizi's act of self-immolation the difficulties of the act of resistance and their inherent and unavoidable violence are highlighted. These two recent acts of resistance expose the need to think political subjectivity otherwise, and point to vistas (the crowd), which can facilitate such a different thinking. By drawing on the constitutive idea of the common as logic of subjectivation the intricate relationship between the body and the political space as manifested in the most recent against austerity and oppressive political regimes protests is interrogated. In the hope of placing the political subject closer to the driving seat of politics a case is made for a rather distinct relationship between political subjectivity of the crowd and the emerging space of resistance. This is a relationship that amounts to a new ‘resisting political subjectivity’ and that can bring about a new way of engaging with the politics of oppression and begins to think political contestations otherwise.     

"They're Worse Off Than Us"- The Social Construction of European Space and Boundaries in the German/Polish Twin-City Guben-Gubin

In the context of globalization and European integration, the interplay between social boundaries and territorially defined political borders becomes more complex in that they become increasingly delinked. In some regional settings, this might imply that while the political border is softened, the socio-cultural closure between the border communities becomes even tighter. This article investigates this issue in relation to the German-Polish border region. Looking at the German-Polish twin-city, Guben-Gubin, the first section describes the ways in which cultural closure materializes. Emphasis is given to the link between cultural closure and an increasing alienation of local people from the Europeanized symbolic cross-border politics pursued by the local and regional political elite(s). The second section, however, argues that the "cultural closure" thesis is perhaps too simplistic to grasp the complexity of cross-border interaction of local people. Investigating the cross-border strategies of three milieux, the article concludes that what can be found in a setting like Guben-Gubin is in fact a complex configuration of openings and closures at various spatial and symbolic levels, sometimes taking place simultaneously in one and the same milieu.     

Transparent space: Law,technology and deliberative democracy in the information society

Abstract

The resuscitation of deliberative democracy in the Information Age requires the construction of transparent public spaces ‐ public arenas where power relationships between speakers are discernible and debate ensues according to the rules of civility and reason (conversational transparency). The metaphor of transparency, in the sense of legal accountability, also connects the role of communications regulation to the development of democratic political culture (legal transparency). Finally, transparency suggests the power of technology to obscure and hinder as well as help the progress of deliberative democracy (technological transparency).