Gendered and classed activist identity in the Russian oppositional youth movement

This article examines how activist identity is constructed in the Russian opposition youth movement Oborona. The research is based on fieldwork among youth activists in Moscow and St Petersburg. The author analyses how activist identity is classed and gendered, as well as its relations to the Russian civic field. The article suggests, first, that the activist identity is marked by an affiliation with the intelligentsia: activists have grown up in intelligentsia families and articulate their activities through the intelligentsia's ‘markers’, such as intelligence, discussion skills and education. Secondly, activists follow a dissidents' cultural model, by emphasizing the importance of non‐conformism and traditional dissident values, and draw parallels between the contemporary government and the totalitarian Soviet state. Thirdly, this traditional intellectual dissident identity is associated with cosmopolitanism through the movement's international connections and appropriation of the forms of action of global social movements. Sometimes the activist practices and aspirations conflict with the group's ideals. Furthermore, the activist identity is gendered and embodied in the right activist ‘look’, which is defined by masculinity. Regardless of the movement's liberal ideals in regards to democracy, questions of gender and sexuality are not discussed, and activists do not question traditional understandings of gendered divisions of labour.     

Eco‐Sociology: Inside and outside of the cocoon

The present article examines how American and German sociological theories deal with the concept of nature and with environmental problems. The results of an analysis of professional sociological publications are presented. Various conceptions of sociological theorists are discussed focussing on nature and environmental problems. It is argued that the social sciences and the mass media are becoming more and more intertwined, increasingly coming to comprise ‘parallel systems of meaning production’ (Gamson and Modgliani, 1989). The basic cultural orientations (subsystems) determine how the concept of nature is discussed. It is suggested to investigate how different conceptions of nature are used in social actions and social situations.     

Breaking the Time Barrier

This paper examines the cultural implications of the increasing speed and acceleration of technological operation and development. It takes its cue from the notion originally proposed by Ernst Jünger and later taken up by Maurice Blanchot and, more recently, Bernard Stiegler, that we are ‘breaking the time barrier’. For Stiegler this is happening because ‘technics is evolving faster than culture’. This paper examines the beginnings of this idea in the work of Jünger, Blanchot and others and traces its development in the work of Derrida and Stiegler, particularly in relation to the increasing power and ubiquity of digital networks. Finally it proposes that one response to this situation is to be found in the artistic avant‐garde and in the concept of ‘delay’ originally proposed by Marcel Duchamp and taken up by Jean François Lyotard.     

Before,during and after the cultural turn: a ‘Baedeker’ to IR's cultural journey

This article, which is part of a broader attempt to construct a ‘Baedeker’ to IR's cultural journey, contributes to the contested debated on the (ir)relevance of cultural diversity to the study of international relations by providing a picture of where we come from, of where we are now situated and of some of the suggestions as to where we should be going in order not to get lost in this almost uncharted landscape. The first main section discusses why questions pertaining to cultural diversity traditionally have held a surprisingly marginal position within IR and shows how IR before the Cultural Turn was more ‘culture-blind’ than ‘cultureblank’. The second main section turns attention to IR during the Cultural Turn and examines how two influential bids for a culturalist alternative have been better at posing good questions than providing attractive answers, placing IR's cultural journey in a ‘blind-blinded stalemate’. Against this background, the last main section asks where the cultural journey should head after the Cultural Turn and identifies and evaluates four different suggestions for ‘routes’ to proceed by. While they may be at variance when it comes to the specific direction suggested, they all represent attempts to set a course between the culture-blind Scylla and the culture-blinded Charybdis, and indicate in this way that it would be premature to let the problems associated with the Cultural Turn lead to an expulsion of questions relating to cultural diversity from the IR agenda.     

The magic of mundane objects: culture,identity and power in a country vets' practice

This article explores and extends the idea that material objects lie at the heart of many of our social, and specifically workplace, interactions. The site of exploration is an ethnography of a British farm animal veterinary surgery. Drawing upon traditional cultural studies approaches alongside contemporary sociological understandings about the place of materials in social life, the article analyses how objects function to track and structure the ways that people of different professional status experience work at a veterinary surgery. It is argued that the power of the veterinary elite in this setting is best understood by paying close attention to ‘mundane’ artefacts. The article argues that such objects, having almost no meaning on their own, can become potent cultural symbols if actors have the necessary social capital to ‘transform’ them. Here, Latimer's concept of ‘strong moves’ (2004) is extended to consider how the reinterpretation of objects might constitute a form of ‘cultural magic’. This article seeks to uncover some of the practical scenarios in which such ‘magical’ transformations play out and describes, through a series of tales from the field (Van Maanen, 1985), the ways in which vets control and regulate their interactions with those outside the professional elite.     

Migration and the dialogue of multiple identifications: Kurdish migrants in the tourist industry of Istanbul

This article examines the cultural dilemmas proceeding from the multiple identifications of Kurdish migrants working in the multicultural environment of Istanbul’s tourist industry. Since identifications invariably multiply when migrants enter multicultural environments, the question emerges how migrants cope with increasing identifications? How are multiple identifications related within the self? In this article, these questions are addressed, first, by analysing how Kurds explain ethnic stereotypes of themselves with reference to migration from the region of origin. Furthermore, conflicts and ambiguities between identifications as individual migrant and identifications as family member are investigated. Third, identifications of the ‘villager’ versus the ‘urbanite’ are reviewed, while, finally, the role of ‘learning’ in the migration process for Kurdish identifications will be highlighted. Dialogical self theory is used to situate the analysis of cultural dilemmas and contradictions of Kurdish migrants in Istanbul within the broader study of multiple identifications of migrants in multicultural societies.     

Disciplining the sex ratio: exploring the governmentality of female foeticide in India

The ‘girl child’ has attracted a considerable amount of attention in India as an object of policy addressing gender discrimination. This article examines the field of campaigns seeking to address female foeticide and positions the public discourse on the ‘girl child’ and sex selective abortion in India within a broad cultural backdrop of son preference. The article argues that anti-female foeticide campaigns exist within a disciplinary domain of female foeticide which both generates a discourse of saving the ‘girl child’ and also shows attempts to utilise both incentives and punitive measures in carving out a female foeticide carceral space.     

Working‐class participation,middle‐class aspiration? Value,upward mobility and symbolic indebtedness in higher education

This paper interrogates the relationship between working‐class participation in higher education (HE) in England and social and cultural mobility. It argues that embarking on a university education for working‐class people has been construed in governmental discourses as an instrumental means of achieving upward mobility, or of aspiring to ‘become middle class’. Education in this sense is thus not only understood as having the potential to confer value on individuals, as they pursue different ‘forms of capital’, or symbolic ‘mastery’ (Bourdieu, 1986), but as incurring a form of debt to society. In this sense, the university can be understood as a type of ‘creditor’ to whom the working‐class participants are symbolically indebted, while the middle classes pass through unencumbered. Through the analysis of empirical research conducted with staff from working‐class backgrounds employed on a university Widening Participation project in England, the article examines resistance to dominant educational discourses, which understand working‐class culture as ‘deficient’ and working‐class participation in HE as an instrumental means of securing upward mobility. Challenging the problematic notion of ‘escape’ implicit in mobility discourses, this paper concludes by positing the alternative concept of ‘fugitivity’, to contest the accepted relationship in HE between creditor and debtor.     

Us and them: the influence of discourses of nationalism on media coverage of the Paralympics

Recent research suggests that the mainstream media representation of disabled athletes increasingly fits within the ‘norms’ of sports reporting. This study interrogates this suggestion, using the theoretical tools of cultural studies to compare representations of athletes from ‘our’ nation with athletes from other countries. The results suggest the change may be related primarily to athletes who can be constructed as being more like ‘Us’ through their national affiliation rather than to a revolution in how journalists see disability sport. For those focused on creating progressive images of disability (such as increasing the visibility, depth and complexity of reporting), this finding may offer a way forward. Through understanding the conditions under which athletes might become publicly visible, disability sport organizations gain tools that may enhance their promotional activities.     

Rhythms of consumption

The emergence of queer theory has posed an incipient and significant challenge to the essentialism which has typically characterized theories of sexuality. In an attempt to eschew the totalizing effects of the categories ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, queer theorists advocate a subjectivity which celebrates sexual difference without concern for achieved or ascribed characteristics. It is this remarkable capacity for inclusivity, attributed most immediately to the gender and race neutrality of ‘queer’, which is of particular interest here. More specifically, this article examines queer subjectivity's relation to a liberal humanist discourse whose purported universality requires the production of abstract, sovereign subjects without concern for their social location. The article in turn examines how the liberal premises which underlie queer subjectivity actually facilitate the reappropriation of ‘queer’ while undermining similar attempts to resignify racial epithets. Far from being a neutral subject position which ensures the liberty and autonomy of its inhabitants, the racial epithet here reinscribes the difference which the ‘queer’ subject and its liberal humanist prototype are perpetually trying to mask. I contend that it is this discrepancy in the capacity to mask difference – via a proximity to or distance from the liberal subject – which permits the reappropriation of ‘queer’ while racial epithets continue to remain taboo in the cultural mainstream.     

Citizenship: reflections on a relevant but ambivalent concept for persons with disabilities

This article examines the significance of citizenship with respect to disability. The article first highlights the idea of citizenship as ‘social contract’. This means the possession of civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights as well as the exercise of duties in society. Due to societal barriers, many disabled persons have difficulties fulfilling citizenship roles. Further, this article draws on citizenship theories; it examines three types of citizenship participation – the social citizen, the autonomous citizen and the political citizen – and discusses their promises and ableist implications. To counterbalance the exclusionary aspects of citizenship, we argue that human rights prove important. At the same time, human rights are more easily proclaimed than enforced and citizenship remains a precondition for effectively implementing human rights. The article concludes that citizenship is a relevant but also ambivalent concept when it comes to disability; it calls for a critical understanding of citizenship in Disability Studies.     

11-M: a lesson on greedy journalism

Through the analysis of Spanish media coverage of the terrorist attack in Madrid 11 March 2004, and specifically of the so-called ‘conspiracy theory’ sustained by certain media for political or commercial reasons with large public success, this article examines the consolidation in Spain of a kind of journalism that tries to model with Lewis Coser's concept of ‘greedy institution’. The political functions of this ‘greedy journalism’ and its relationship with the so-called ‘neo-populist turn’ of present politics in Western democracies are discussed in brief.     

Reframing Tri Hita Karana: From ‘Balinese Culture’ to Politics

This article takes issue with the uncritical way in which claims of ‘culture’, ‘tradition’ or ‘local knowledge’ are used in science and policymaking around the Balinese irrigators' association (subak). The growing problems of Balinese irrigated agriculture are increasingly framed in ‘cultural’ ways that are not neutral: such accounts of irrigated agriculture in relation to Balinese culture deeply influence the world of policymaking. In this article we discuss the emergence of Tri Hita Karana (THK; ‘the three causes of well-being’) as an ideology, scientific concept and policy concept in irrigated agriculture and the subak domain. We argue that this ideological concept is not simply ‘local wisdom’, ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ but requires critical scientific scrutiny as part of wider processes of socio-political change. How is it mobilised? What does its growing popularity mean for our knowledge of Balinese irrigated agriculture, of policy processes directed at the subak and of the workings of policies in real-life contexts?     

Victims and Vamps,Madonnas and Whores

This article explores how the US ‘war on drugs’ depends on certain notions of femininity and womanhood. In particular, I examine how female drug couriers from the Americas are constructed at US border sites of international airports in the 1990s. I find that female drug couriers are described in terms of victims and vamps – a take off of the madonna/whore dichotomy. The victim and vamp discourses, I argue, are the performative enactments of a security state that operates according to a racialized logic of masculinist protection. I hold in tension the circulation of the victim/vamp discourses with the story of Paula, a Colombian woman who was caught trafficking heroin in hidden compartments of her suitcase. I use Paula's story to call attention to the political work in dismissing women as agents in the international drug trade.     

Robert Nisbet and the Problem of Community

The article traces the importance and development of the concept of ‘community’ in Robert Nisbet’s sociological theory. Community and voluntary associations were key components of his view of civil society, because they stood between the individual and the state as bastions of personal liberty against authoritarianism. This idea was taken from Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis of America democracy and developed by Nisbet as a critique of modern America. The article examines the conservative underpinnings of Nisbet’s sociology and compares his perspective on civil society with the idea of civil religion in J-J Rousseau and Robert Bellah. Nisbet’s perspective is criticised because not all voluntary associations have beneficial effects on civil society. The article considers how far his views on authority and community are still relevant and concludes by making a distinction between ‘sticky societies’ that are hard to join and difficult to leave and ‘elastic societies’ that are easy to join and cost-free to leave, and asks whether community is possible when the Internet has transformed sticky relationships into elastic, thin and dispersed relationships.     

The Global Politics of Forced Labour

This article examines the politics of governing forced labour. It develops and applies an approach drawing on Marx’s conception of the historical formation of ‘free’ labour in the process of ‘primitive accumulation’ and Gramsci’s conception of the ‘relations of force’. Viewed through this lens, rather than representing discrete ontological categories, the boundary between ‘free’ and ‘forced’ labour is repositioned as largely a contested and ambivalent artefact of governance. The concept of the ‘political relations of force’ highlights the ways in which such constructions are shaped by complex intersections between a diversity of different social forces. This approach is subsequently applied in an analysis of an International Labour Organization project on dealing with ‘traditional slavery’ in Niger.     

‘Keeping it real’: tryhards,clones and youth discourses of authentic identity from Hollywood to high school

Authenticity is a key cultural rubric for youth in the contemporary West. Texts aimed at young people frequently direct viewers to ‘keep it real’, to ‘be themselves’ and to avoid ‘putting up a front’. ‘Being yourself’ is portrayed as a moral achievement, yet also as something subjects should ‘naturally’ be. This article examines how students at an urban high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand conceive of being ‘real’, exploring what they deem to be authentic identity and its expressions. This article considers the students' use of both constructionist ‘surface’ and essentialist ‘depth’ discourses of identity. It examines how the students conceive of authentic identity as both stable and fluid, anchored in bodily experience and produced at the moment of recognition by others. It argues that through the production of the figures of the ‘clone’ and the ‘tryhard’, the students resolve the tension created by their positioning of identity as inseparable from the gaze of others and their view that to live for others is inauthentic. The students distance themselves from the behaviour of these Others, who they conceive as presenting themselves inauthentically. The students' conceptualisation of authenticity and use of the figures of the clone and the tryhard provides impetus for the positioning of authentic identity as performative, produced through its enactment.     

Transnational communities and business systems

The paper examines the concept of ‘transnational communities’ as a way of understanding globalization practices in business and management. It argues that ‘transnational communities’ are emergent properties of the internationalizing of economic activity. Three specific aspects of this process are considered in detail: the development of multinational companies; the development of international regulatory bodies; and the development of cognitive and normative frameworks through the practices of business education, management consultancies and other global professional service firms. It is argued that in each case, transnational spaces are emerging; within these spaces, transnational communities are developing. The article calls for more research into the diverse nature of these spaces and communities as a way of avoiding the sterile polarities of what Held et al. (1999) refer to as the ‘hyperglobalists’ and the ‘sceptics’.     

Cultural production and the politics of identity: On the strategic use of ‘multiculturalism’ in two Austrian cities

This article is a résumé of the findings of an empirical study carried out by the ICCR Vienna between July 1993 and July 1994. The study investigated the images of ‘foreigners’ as members of immigrant minorities that emerge out of the interaction between the cultural administration, organizers of cultural events, cultural agents and ‘ethnic minority’ artists, and how these images and the discourse on ‘foreigners’ relates to practices of inclusion and exclusion. Specifically examined were artistic productions and initiatives of the low‐profit and non‐profit sector of theatrical and musical performances in Vienna and Graz. Qualitative interviews with the main actors were supported and enriched through non‐standardized participant observation, action research and a modest social experiment. The article argues that the Austrian variant of the discourse on ‘multiculturalism’ serves as a tool to formulate social order, whereby social inequality is transformed into cultural difference. The emancipatory dimension of culture as a way of life is used to construct homogeneous cultural ( = ’ethnic') collectives. In this construction immigrant artists serve as the representatives of the collective culture of the ‘others’.