Regionalism,urbanism, and participation in the ministry: Blacks in the southern United States in the early twentieth century

This study examines Blacks’ participation in the ministry in the U.S. South during the early twentieth century. Analyses of Census data reveal that the odds of southern Blacks’ participation in the ministry were exceptionally high. These odds were lowest in the hinterlands of the Deep South, where Blacks’ socioeconomic disadvantages were greatest, and highest in the South's largest cities, where Blacks had established urban communities. The results suggest that support for Blacks’ participation in the ministry was intensified by urbanism in the South's major cities.     

Theorizing notions of the participation of people in poverty in social policymaking: Policing,politics and subjectification

Since the 1990s, a paradigm of participation has gained prominence and become a dominant policy rhetoric in anti-poverty policymaking in Europe, embracing the key idea that people in poverty should participate as equal citizens in political decision-making processes. Based on a historical case study of the production process of a Belgian white paper, the General Report on Poverty (1994), we investigate who participated in the GRP production process, and whether the underlying participatory and democratic mechanisms produced a shift in power and might have led to a more socially just and equal society. We rely on a central set of ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière to theorize different notions of participation, and tease out whether the processing of equality had the capacity to move from policing towards politics through subjectification. Our research study demonstrates how social change and a reconfiguration of the democratic order can appear as a moment of democracy, yet inevitably leads to a new police.