Time to look in/at anger: considerations on the position and policing of young people’s anger

Mental and emotional well-being is steadily overtaking physical difficulty as the biggest health challenge facing young people. As a result, young people’s emotional well-being and needs are a significant concern within contemporary youth studies. However, the intricacies of ‘managing emotion’ have been somewhat neglected in the context of youth studies. In particular, the role of discourses of emotional well-being to produce ‘feeling rules’ [Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. Florence, KY: Routledge], to discipline, and to restrict expressions of emotion has been unconsidered. This article explores this problematic further with the intention of provoking a larger concentration on relationship between the policing of emotion and youth well-being discourses. Specifically, it focuses on anger as one of the emotions that young people are encouraged to move away from. It outlines how young people’s right to be angry is policed through the construction of angry subjectivities as characterised by incompleteness. It focuses on two – the unresolved subject and the unreasoned subject. Young people, who are already constructed as incomplete, are particularly vulnerable to this policing. Drawing on a range of theoretical interjections on the disciplining of ‘adult’ anger, the article explores the political importance of anger, how it is limited for young people, and the complexities of engaging with anger in the context of youth studies. Given the limited attention anger has attracted in youth studies literature, the article is intentionally provocative. However, as the article notes, this is a complex debate with many challenges and a much more detailed investigation is necessary.     

‘TODOS SOMOS PRESIDENTES/WE ARE ALL PRESIDENTS’

In light of recent discussions of Jacques Rancière's notion of the political in cultural theory and the ‘left turn’ in Latin America, exemplified in the election of Evo Morales as the first indigenous president, this essay discusses concepts of governance elaborated by Bolivian indigenous intellectuals and media activists. It engages in detail with three examples of thinking through what is arguably a broad de-colonial process: the work of the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA) and the movement to reconstitute the ayllu; Pablo Mamani's analysis of the micro-governments in El Alto; and CEFREC-CAIB's indigenous media activism. Thinking from the perspective of a long-standing struggle against global capitalism and its colonial legacies, the political constitutes – paradoxically – a complex and dynamic process of institutionalized consensus governance. Levels of community, regional, and national governance are bound into a feedback loop where representation gives way to the ideal of ‘mandar obedeciendo’ (governing by obeying). The Bolivian ‘democratic revolution’ is hence not conceptualized merely as a widening of the citizen base – a form of inclusion that Rancière would call ‘police’-but rather as profoundly reshaping the relation between the social, the cultural, and the state, and thus of democracy itself.     

TV VIEWING AS GOOD CITIZENSHIP? POLITICAL RATIONALITY,ENLIGHTENED DEMOCRACY AND PBS

This article draws on theories of political rationality, governmentality and cultural policy as well as historical analysis to examine how a philosophy of ‘enlightened democracy’ informed the historical formation of PBS. I analyse its early campaign to turn TV viewers into active citizens and show how the citizen subjectivities constructed presupposed a set of knowledge-power relations defined and managed by ‘opinion leaders’. Following a cultural studies approach I analyse policy and popular discourses to show how requirements of professionalism, reason, civility and detached objectivity served as a means of differentiating good citizens and as a form of social control.     

Mediated and moderated effects of political communication on civic participation

Australian scholars and politicians have long been concerned about politically uninformed and inactive young Australians. However, few efforts have been made to explain how the use of traditional and online media may affect youth’s participation in politics. Our research utilises the citizen communication mediation model and extends the expected mediation chain by an additional examination of the possible interactions between news media use and political discussions, as suggested by the differential gains model. Using representative data from Australian 10th graders, we examine whether and how news media usage (newspapers, television, radio, and the Internet) affects expected participation in a range of civic and political activities conditional of discussions about political issues (with family, friends, and online). Path models account for additional mediators (civic knowledge and civic efficacy) and control variables to explain future civic and political participation. The results suggest that news media use stimulates political discussions, although different media exert differential effects. Yet, news exposure hardly influences the second mediators (civic knowledge and civic efficacy) in a direct manner. In fact, civic knowledge and efficacy mediate the relationships between political communication and participation, both directly and sequentially. Moderation analyses clarify that despite the mediating role of political discussions, news media exposure also influences (future) civic participation contingent of students’ engagement in (primarily Internet-based) discussions about political and social issues. We emphasise the significance of these results with reference to previous research, discuss potential directions for future research, and draw conclusions for civics and citizenship education.     

NOTES TOWARDS A THEORY OF THE DEMOCRATIC LIMIT

A meaningful discussion about the democratic limit or boundary is only now beginning. Martha Nussbaum's call for a world citizenship in response to the terrorist bombings of 9/11 has animated this conversation in the USA. In South Africa, the political transition from apartheid to democracy keeps running-up against the substance of the ‘people’. In the absence of any ‘traditional’ unifying principles (of language, culture, religion, race and so on), the identity of South Africans is elusive. We might note too that much of the cosmopolitan literature on democracy appeals to a shift in scale, from the territorial state to the world or globe or even planet. One of the key gaps in democratic theory, however, has been its failure to conceptualize such a limit. How can democrats discriminate between citizen and non-citizen without being discriminatory? This is the question that this article seeks to address. It does so by following a major development in the work of Ernesto Laclau – from his collaboration with Chantal Mouffe in their groundbreaking work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy to his most recent book On Populist Reason.     

Leadership Trends in Advanced Democracies

Political sociology suggests two inter‐related leadership trends in advanced democracies: the increasing prominence of political leaders, and the waning influence of political parties, especially the ideological‐programmatic ‘mass parties’ or Volksparteien. These trends intensified and reinforced each other over the last 30–40 years resulting in a rapidly changing physiognomy of contemporary democracy. Democratic politics becomes more elite driven, mass‐mediated and populist in style than in the past. Moreover, the power and elite structures in advanced democracies, as well as the electoral competition, increasingly resemble what Weber labelled ‘leader democracy’. The shift towards ‘leader democracy’ has coincided with the processes of party‐voter dealignment and decline of political parties, the rise of the electronic mass media, and the ascendancy of powerful leaders–reformers in the ‘core’ liberal democracies. The sociological argument about the shift is anchored in a theoretical framework derived from works of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter. It depicts democratic political leaders as key political actors embedded in broader elites, motivated by determination and commitment, and empowered by the resources of modern states and the mass media.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

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.     

Global development and precarity: a critical political analysis

ABSTRACT

Precarity as a concept has come to be conceived as a distinctive experience of neoliberal development, especially in the European context. The experience of precarity, according to some, has influenced efforts aimed at living otherwise from the precepts of neoliberal development. Yet, for others, precarity is producing a ‘new dangerous class’. However, despite different perspectives of the effects and implications of precarity, the analytical purchase and political utility of the concept has received insufficient attention. In this article, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the limitations of ‘precarity’ as a concept for critical political analysis. We argue that in the dominant use of precarity as an analytic of inequality, particular experiences are rendered as historical universals. Consequently, these (particular) experiences are disconnected from global social and political relations of inequality, while at the same time reinforcing a linear and reductionist conception of development. We demonstrate that the temporal scheme represented by the notion of the ‘age of post-Fordism’, which serves as a crucial marker of the explanatory framework of precarity (in Europe), actually misconstrues the politics of global development through inequalities. Moreover, the tendency to focus on subjectification as conditioning the formation of a ‘new’ dangerous class, entails far-reaching omissions of actual transnational political struggles against domination and inequality. Instead of precarity, a critical engagement with the politics of global development ought to be the subject of analysis for understanding contested relations of affluence, insecurity and inequality.     

Political activation and social movements: Addressing non-participation in Aotearoa New Zealand

The decline of participation in traditional civic political processes, like voting in elections and writing to elected representatives, continues to deepen in contemporary liberal democracies. However, civics comprise only one avenue for political participation. Social movements also play a key role in influencing political affairs by exerting pressure on established institutions from outside rather than within. ‘Political activation’ is key to understanding and addressing non-participation in both movement and civic settings alike, yet activation in movement settings, like non-participation more generally, remains under-researched. This article seeks to address this imbalance by exploring ways of using political activation theory to synthesise research on the fields of political participation and non-participation, in both civic and social movement contexts. After reviewing the literature on activation, which favours political participation in civic settings, I then juxtapose this existing scholarship with a case study focused more on non-participation and social movements as they are understood by movement organisers in Aotearoa New Zealand. In so doing, I demonstrate how civics, social movements, participation and non-participation can be better understood together to advance scholarship on why people do or do not engage with politics.     

Cultures of Denial: Avoiding Knowledge of State Violations of Human Rights in Argentina and the United States

Why and how do individuals distance themselves from information about their government's participation in torture and other human rights violations? Such citizen (non)response implicitly legitimates and thus facilitates the continuation of abusive state actions. Drawing on a model of socially organized denial, we explore how sociocultural contexts and practices mediate individuals’ avoidance, justification, normalization, silencing, and outright denial of human rights abuses in two sites: Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983) and the United States during the “war on terror” post September 11, 2001. The study is based on 40 in‐depth interviews with members of diverse civic, religious, community, and political organizations in both countries (20 in each site). Comparing the political circumstances of a dictatorship and an electoral democracy, the analysis shows the roles of patriotic and national security ideologies and practices of silence and talk as organizers of cultures of denial.     

The Goals of History Teaching

Abstract

The following article is an excerpt of a speech given by Larry Diamond to those participating in the 1996 Civitas Panamericano Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In his speech, Dr. Diamond included a comprehensive survey of the state of stable, liberal democratic government in the Americas. He outlined the multiple levels of development required to achieve stable, liberal democratic institutions, but he focused the major portion of his address on that one level “indispensable for a stable, liberal, and effective democracy”—the individual citizen. At that level, civic education, both formal and informal, is required. The editors of The Social Studies offer readers Dr. Diamond's concept of educating for democracy, hoping that the excerpts will result in our readers' critical reflection on the revival of civic education in the United States and in other parts of the Americas.     

The regime’s worst nightmare: the mobilization of citizen democracy. A study of Podemos’ (aesthetic) populism and the production of affect in political discourse

In spite of not even being officially registered three months before the European Parliament Elections of 2014, the Spanish upstart party Podemos captured almost 8 percent of the vote, while barely nine months after its formation, in October 2014, social surveys were citing the party as the leading force in national politics. The overall purpose of this paper is to explore how Podemos’ aesthetic and its discursive strategies are being used to mobilize affect and create collective identities in the battle for political hegemony in Spain. I argue in dialogue with Laclau [2005. On populist reason. London: Verso], Errejón and Mouffe [2016. Podemos: in the name of the people. London: Lawrence & Wishart] that: (a) the articulation of a new political grammar and discursive conflicts in which the popular majority can identify themselves as subjects in opposition to an adversary ‘Other’ plays a central role in constructing ‘the people’ as a new form of political culture, especially in times of crisis whereby; (b) the notion of populism transgresses categories such as ‘oversimplification’ and/or ‘demagogy’ and can also be regarded in terms of exhibiting sensitivity to popular demands and participatory democracy. My findings show that welfare politics are not necessarily best communicated through traditional left-wing symbols, due to the left’s popular link with communism and political defeat; these having been repeatedly recounted by the media/culture industry throughout history. Indeed, many may share the idea of protecting a nation’s common social services without wanting to position themselves within a Marxist (leftist) framework. I point to the representative crisis as an affective crisis where there is a potential affective space to be filled. From here, I stress that resistance movements seem to need to learn the current media logic of conflict and recognition in order to mediate affect and produce identification.     

THE POPULAR IN THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

This paper suggests a systems theoretical re-reading of popular communication and the Popular in the political system. Luhmann' anti-humanist notion of communication helps to reframe the discussion of the Popular: it is not defined by an en- or decoding instance, but by a particular mode of ‘connectivity'. Drawing from heterogeneous material (Mars Attacks!, crowd psychology, theory of democracy), it is argued that the problem of the Popular arises when a functional system has to represent something that transgresses the system' universality. That which the system has to exclude to become a system re-emerges as ‘grotesque hybrid’, thus pointing at a universality that is, on the one hand, an opportunity for a further universalization and, on the other, a threat to the very universality of the system. The ‘Popular’ thus acquires a hybrid position by articulating these two dimensions.     

‘The Girl About Town’: discussions of modernity and female youth in Drum magazine, 1951–1970

This article examines the trope of the ‘modern miss’ in Drum magazine 1951–1970 as a locus for debate over South African urban modernity. At the centre of Drum’s African urbanity was a debate between a progressive, positively ‘modern’ existence and an attendant fear of moral and social ‘breakdown’ in the apartheid city. The trope of the ‘modern miss’ drew upon both discourses. Drum’s fascination with the ‘modern miss’ reached a peak in the years 1957–1963, during which time she appeared prominently in the magazine as a symbolic pioneer of changing gender and generational relationships. However, this portrayal continued to coexist alongside the image of young women as the victims of moral degeneration. The ‘modern miss’ was increasingly differentiated from adult women within Drum’s pages, which distanced her from the new space won by political activists. By examining constructions of young womanhood, this article points to the gendering of ‘youth’ at the intersection of commercial print culture and shifting social relations in mid‐twentieth‐century South Africa. It is also suggested that understanding the social configurations of Drum’s modernity illuminates the gendered and generational responses of formal political movements as they conducted their own concurrent debates.     

Custom,Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea

This paper seeks to illustrate some of the distinctive national features of the relationship between custom, law, and ideology in Papua New Guinea. While the concept of ‘native custom’ was initially the creation of Australian colonial law, the relationship between custom and law acquired a new complexion around the time of national independence in 1975, and the political use of the Tok Pisin words kastom and lo, both then and since, reveals that their relationship is not like that of the two things commonly known as ‘custom’ and ‘law’ in the English language or the political discourse of a country like England or Australia. Instead, their relationship has to be understood through an exploration of the metaphorical use of the Tok Pisin word rot (‘road’), which seems to stand for something midway between a ‘cult’ and an ‘ideology’, and through an understanding of the way in which the social relations of large-scale resource development have transformed the post-colonial political landscape.     

Media advocates,Latino citizens and niche cable The limits of ‘no limits’ TV

In Shot in America, Chon Noriega calls for the study of media activism’s work ‘within the system’ of state institutions and for analysis of the relationships between media activism, the television industry and government policies. This article uses a cultural policy studies focus to answer this call and map the deregulated terrain upon which media advocacy groups must now operate. Liberal governance demands that media advocates find means other than state-directed appeals to advance their agendas. As such, this essay examines the efforts of several Latino advocacy groups to garner viewer support for a Latino-themed cable television show, Resurrection Boulevard, and to use the series as a vehicle for increased Latino participation in the television industry. This article focuses on the issue of access for Latinos to professional positions that affect television programming, and it presents tools for advocacy efforts within political spheres to achieve more socially equitable access to media technologies. First, the paper traces the regulatory history of the broadcasting and cable television industries to show how the federal government narrowly conceives of ‘the public interest’ as a specifically consumerist one. The article then analyses the structures that led to cable television’s ‘narrowcasting’ format, such as Showtime’s ‘No Limits’ programming, and argues that liberalism has created a context wherein several media advocates normalise the ‘citizen-consumer’ model. Having established this groundwork, the author then conducts a case study of the economic and social forces that shape Resurrection Boulevard, which is written, produced and acted by Latinos. Through this study, the author maintains that advocacy groups’ consumer-based appeals to Latinos as ‘citizen-consumers’ fail to serve as effective instruments for achieving increased minority representation in the television industry.     

Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture

This paper explores the potential for the formation of political solidarities across the spatial divisions being intensified by dominant responses to the European crisis. In doing so, it takes inspiration from Doreen Massey’s thinking around the contested terms on which space and politics are articulated and her engagement with the 2008 crisis through projects such as the Kilburn manifesto. We argue that her book World city powerfully articulates a way of thinking about the spatial politics of a particular conjuncture. The paper traces the ways in which various political interventions in post-crisis politics have been shaped by distinctive ‘nationed’ geographical imaginaries. In particular, we explore how left-wing nationed narratives impact on the discursive horizon and unpack their implications for the articulation of solidarities and emancipatory politics in the context of the ‘European Crisis’. Building on this, we reflect on how trans-local solidarities and alliances might be articulated across socio-spatial divisions and contest the decidedly uneven, racialized, gendered and classed impacts of dominant European politics. We argue that such solidarities and alliances can form a crucial intervention in challenging the dominant spatial politics of crisis and articulating left political strategies on different terms.     

Gandhian fictions: rereading Satyagraha in South Africa

From 1923–24, Mahatma Gandhi wrote his recollections of South Africa from a prison cell in India. This text, Satyagraha in South Africa, was intended to be ‘helpful in our present struggle’ to liberate India, as well as ‘a guide to any regular historian who may arise in the future.’ An emphatically transnational text, Satyagraha in South Africa relies upon the mode of allegory to place South Africa and India in relation to each other. As it encourages comparison, however, it discourages common cause. Gandhi places Africans as the anterior sign in a larger system of signification: South African politics prefigures Indian anti-colonial victory to come, but the African native also represents the innocent natives of India writ large.

Without the political didactics of Hind Swaraj, the journalistic interventions of Indian Opinion or even the philosophical aspirations of My Experiments with Truth, this fictionalised history has rarely been the centre of attention. Satyagraha in South Africa, however, reveals Gandhi’s understanding of imperial geography, as he places South Africa and India in a single frame but fails to imagine them as inhabiting the same historical present. This understanding is reflected in his political decisions, as he fails to connect Indian anti-colonial agitation with struggles elsewhere.