Ideology in Action: Symbolic Localization of Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey

Revolutionary ideologies such as Marxism and Islamism often aim to transform dominant local structures, leading their proponents to find themselves torn between global ideologies and local politics. A critical question arises: What does happen when a revolutionary movement's ideology drastically contradicts with the movement's local pragmatic purposes? Analyzing Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, this article explores the complex process of ideological transformation under the forces of local competition. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic approach, I introduce the concept of symbolic localization to understand how revolutionary ideologies evolve through pragmatic concerns. Symbolic localization refers to a discursive process of collective reputation work in which social movement activists blend local cultural repertoires and their “we” identity in order to build recognition, legitimacy, and prestige in the eyes of local population. Three major mechanisms of the symbolic localization process are identified: moral authority building, public symbolism, and memory work. Symbolic localization suggests analyzing movement ideology as a discursive process and illuminates how political activists are shaped by relational local engagements.     

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.     

Reproducing Inequalities through Development: The MDGs and the Politics of Method

Abstract

This article is a critical inquiry into particular methodological means underlying analyses of development, inequalities, and poverty in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discourse. A populist approach to poverty reduction, the MDG initiative has gained much exposure at the expense of a closer scrutiny of the specific methodological premises (and their implications) underlining the development frameworks through which the goals were to be realized. A critical examination of premises of this kind demonstrates the way in which the application of specific methods in analyses of development and poverty is carefully crafted to serve discernible ideological ends. In order to explicate this by way of an example, I draw on MDG1 (and target 2 with reference to hunger), which I discuss in relation to its integration with the overarching development objective of realizing economic growth. My aim is to demonstrate how dominant explanations and understandings of poverty and hunger, social struggles for fundamental entitlements, and ultimately ‘development’, are construed in ways that are premised on abstractions from actual social and political relations; they are framed as ‘independent variables’ external to the very policies and strategies of international development. The critical engagement offered in my analysis is timely, given the extent to which the MDG initiative and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals agenda have been presented without any attempt to answer to decades (and more) of critical arguments that offer more rigorous and sustained understandings of inequalities, including deprivations of basic life sustaining needs and fundamental entitlements.     

Politics of ‘Leaving No One Behind’: Contesting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda

Abstract

In this article, I develop a critical analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda and its commitment to ‘leave no one behind’. The Preamble to the Resolution on the SDGs adopted by the United Nations General Assembly stated the following: ‘We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. (…) As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind’. Through a close examination of the SDG initiative—and aligned concrete policy proposals—I demonstrate that the project to ‘leave no one behind’ rests on specific ideological premises: it is designed to promote and consolidate a highly contested neo-liberal variant of capitalist development. The SDGs are framed as a universal project, with quite substantial institutional monitoring mechanisms aimed at ensuring the successful implementation of aligned policies. Indeed, as I demonstrate, the implementation of highly contested neoliberal policies are themselves explicit goals of the SDG agenda. In this respect, the SDGs differ significantly from the Millennium Development Goal initiative. The argument I develop demonstrates that the SDG agenda may be aimed in part at undermining political struggles that aspire for more socially just and ecologically sustainable approaches to development. Overall, I argue that the explicit commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ is a discourse that is strategically deployed to justify the implementation of a highly problematic political project as the framework of global development. This is a framework that privileges commercial interests over commitments to provide universal entitlements to address fundamental life-sustaining needs. Political struggles over development will continue against the ideology of the SDG project and for transformative shifts for actually sustainable development.     

Middle classes,democratization, and class formation

Conclusions This analysis of the South Korean case demonstrates the importance of the historical context for understanding the political role of the middle classes. In late industrialization, as occurred in South Korea and other East Asian countries, the new middle class has emerged as a significant social class, before the capitalist class established its ideological hegemony and before industrial workers developed into an organized class. Neither of these two major classes was able to offer an ideological or organizational leadership to the middle classes. In this context, the middle class can act as more than merely a dependent variable. In South Korea, the minjung movement led by an intellectual segment of the middle class played a critical role in the formation of the working class, by providing an opposition ideology, new politicized languages, organizational networks, and other resources.The Korean experience also highlights the significant role of the state in class formation. The predominant role of the state in economic and social development puts it at the center of major social conflicts. Social tensions and conflicts that emerge in rapid industrialization are directly and indirectly related to the character of the state and the economic policies it implements. A high level of politicization among Korean middle-class members, not only among intellectuals but also among a large number of white-collar workers, is the product of the authoritarian regimes of Park and Chun and their repressive control of civil society. Both the nature of Korean middle-class politics and its relationship with the working-class formation have been shaped by the nature of state politics.The role of the middle class in the South Korean democratization process has been complex and variable, in part because of its internal heterogeneity and in part because of shifting political conjunctures in the transition to democracy. It would not make much sense, therefore, to characterize the Korean middle class as progressive or conservative, because different segments of it were inserted into the shifting conjunctures of political transition differently. At the same time, it would be also unsatisfactory to characterize middle-class politics as simply inconsistent or incoherent, because there exists some definite pattern in their behaviors.This analysis suggests that political behaviors of different segments of the middle class can be explained in terms of their locations within the broad spectrum of middle-class positions between capital and labor and by the changing balance of power between the two major classes. This is to acknowledge the fact that capital-labor relations constitute the primary axis of conflict and that middle-class politics must be understood ultimately in terms of this principal mechanism of class struggle. This is, however, not to assume that middle-class politics is simply a terrain of struggle between the capitalist and the working classes, as many Marxist theorists do. To repeat, in certain historical contexts middle-class politics can have an independent effect on the formation of the two major classes and the outcomes of struggles between the two.     

The Social Bases and Discursive Context of the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism: The Cases of Iran and Syria

This article focuses on the socioeconomic and political context of the 1950s and 1960s to explain the rise of fundamentalism in Iran and Syria. I argue that Islamic fundamentalism in these countries gained support from certain traditional property-owning classes who were antagonized by the state economic policies and bureaucratic expansion and by the state's effective suppression of the ideological and political pluralism of the earlier period. The state's repressive policies channeled oppositional politics through the medium of religion. I further argue that the more immediate determinant of Islamic fundamentalism was the state's ideology and its intervention in culture production. The state shaped the identity of the opposition and structured the kind of argument the opposition formulated against it. On the basis of the empirical cases of Iran and Syria, I argue that conceptualizing ideology as a discourse resolves some of the difficulties involved in the subjective/psychological conception of ideology in the analysis, assessment, and understanding of the way ideology is produced and its role in social process, particularly when only historical materials are available. I also argue for treating ideology as an autonomous category with a dynamic of its own. Finally, I suggest a model of ideological production.     

Amazonia and the cultural politics of extractivism: Sumak Kawsay and Block 20 of Ecuador

ABSTRACT

This article explores the dynamics of power and ideology that congeal around the narrative of Sumak Kawsay, or Good Living in Ecuador. My purpose is document these social and cultural logics of extractivist capitalism through a detailed ethnography of these processes within indigenous communities in Ecuador. Specifically, I focus on the communities within Block 20 of Amazonian Ecuador, the site of the Pungarayacu heavy petroleum project, 2008–2015, in the Province of Napo. The paper provides an analysis and ethnographic examples of the political, social and cultural relations that defined the implementation of the heavy petroleum project in the region; the analysis details not only the close connections among the State, the company, and local governments, but also the way indigenous communities were controlled and subordinated to the interests of extractivism. My argument is that, for Amazonian communities located in strategic zones, extractivism is a sphere of exchange that is intimately connected with development. Development and its ideology of Good Living naturalize and legitimate extractivist activities, and allow capitalism to expand and adapt to different State logics. The narrative of Good Living, I conclude, is ideological. Its true purpose is not social welfare or the reform of capitalism, but rather power.     

Humor and Social Movements

At first glance, humor and politics may appear oppositional. Politics is often understood as serious, important, and grave, while humor is perceived as lighthearted and frivolous. Beneath the surface, however, it is evident that humor and politics are actually inextricably linked and have been throughout political history. This paper interrogates the tensions between humor and seriousness, importance and frivolity, and legitimate and dismissible to examine the manifestations of humor in social movement protest. I discuss how humor is used as a communicative and emotional strategy for social movement activists and organizations and focus on two constellations of movement humor: humor directed outside the group in the forms of tactics and frames, which I term external humor, and the role of humor in leadership, collective identity, and emotional labor, termed internal humor. To illustrate the role of humor in protest, I integrate examples from scholarly research, media depictions, and participant observation data to provide examples of how humor is manifest as an external tactic, social movement frame, and its potential role in strengthening ties to leadership and collective identity. The essay concludes by highlighting some potential paths for future study about the relationship between humor, ideology, identity, and power.     

The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Vulnerability

The Occupy movement has generated a significant amount of scholarly literature, most of which has focused on the movement's tactics or goals, or sought to explain its emergence. Nevertheless, we lack an explanation for the movement's broad appeal and mass support. In this article we present original research on Occupy in New York City, Detroit, and Berlin, which demonstrates that the movement's heterogeneous participants coalesced around the concept of vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inability to adapt to shocks and stresses, and it inhibits social reproduction and prohibits social mobility. Rather than specifically discussing the wealth of elites per se, Occupy participants consistently expressed the feeling that the current political economic system safeguards elites and increases the vulnerability of everyone else. We argue that the Occupy movement has reworked the relationship among a range of political struggles that were hitherto disconnected (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements) and rendered them complementary through the politics of vulnerability.     

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.     

The Impact of the Economic Downturn,Immigrants, and Political Representation on White Supremacist Group Organization in the United States

Abstract

On the surface, groups advocating white supremacy appear similar. However, upon closer examination these groups vary in their strategies and goals as well as how they are affected by the economic downturn, immigrants, and political representation. This study utilizes resource mobilization theory to examine the relationship among political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and white supremacist group organization in the United States between 2000 and 2007. With the fifty states as the unit of analysis, I conduct a pooled time-series analysis to answer the following research questions: Is there a relationship among a state's political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and individual white supremacist group organization? Does this relationship vary by white supremacist group type? White supremacist group data disaggregated by type reveal that group dynamics are in play as groups navigate state political and social factors to determine ideal areas to organize. This study reveals the importance in examining white supremacist groups disaggregated by type, particularly the political and social factors that motivate their level of organization.     

Power,identity, and history in central Botswana

This analysis offers an examination of two larger theoretical questions. The first is the question of theorizing local‐global relations; the second concerns the value of the concept of resistance. The essay describes the emergence of a new village community at the rural periphery of eastern Botswana. In exploring in great detail the complex struggles that have constituted the local politics in this rural periphery and the engagement of such local struggles with national and transnational forces, I wish to examine the way collective identities, social space, and social relations have shifted in the course of the past decade or more in Botswana.     

‘We feel the responsibility that you shirk’: movement institutionalization,the politics of responsibility and the case of the Swedish environmental movement

This article provides directions for advancing the conceptualization of the relationship between social movements and institutionalization, based on a case study of the Swedish environmental movement strategies. We argue that the concepts of (de)responsibilization and (de)politicization provide tools for an improved analysis of the dynamics of how social movements interact both with established political institutions and corporations in a new context. The introduction of new regulatory frameworks in environmental politics has shaped interaction between social movements and the state in new ways, involving neoliberal responsibilization, meaning active involvement by civil society and business in political responsibilities previously associated with state agencies – a development involving an increasing emphasis on market mechanisms. We argue that this has involved a de-politicization of environmental issues in the sense that it engages political actors in a moral discourse and a technocratic practice that suppresses the (potential) articulation of social conflict through consensus building. However, we also show how movement actors resist the discourse that encourages them to take on certain responsibilities, thus engaging in a politics of responsibility. Empirically, we demonstrate how the changing strategies of the Swedish environmental movement in the 2000s need to be understood in relation to the following processes, indicating that the Swedish case has a general relevance for an understanding of the contemporary environmental movement globally: (1) the transformation of the Swedish model of welfare capitalism under the influence of neoliberal discourse; (2) international environmental policy developments, most importantly the emergence of climate change as a dominant issue globally.     

Social Movements and Patronage Politics: Processes of Demobilization and Dual Pressure

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a “dual pressure” stemming “from below” and “from above.” In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure “from below” on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure “from above,” because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.     

Violence in the name of god? A framing processes approach to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Since summer 2014, the insurgent group ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) has become a major concern for international politics and global security due to its rapid territorial gains, violent operations and the propagation of Salafi-jihadist ideology. This study aims to enhance the academic understanding of ISIS by demystifying the ideological reasoning behind its use of violence. It therefore investigates the link between structural factors that served ISIS’s evolution, its ideological outlook and the significance of this ideology to legitimize violent action. As its theoretical basis, the study employs framing processes within the study of social movements. Methodologically, discursive frame analysis serves to explore the relation of ISIS’s ideology to structural events and experiences to better understand how the group justifies violence. Therefore, the study draws on audio speeches and issues of the magazines Dabiq and Dar al-Islam published by ISIS, which are examined on the rhetoric of othering, collective identity and justifying violence. It is argued that ISIS constructs a collective action frame which creates a social reality that bestows the group with a rationale for action. ISIS’s ideology, based on Islamic symbolism, presents an interpretative lens which assigns meaning to the structural environment of ISIS’s emergence. In this context, violence is justified as a necessity to defend Islam and as an obligation for the true Muslim believer. The discussion concludes that ISIS’s ideology legitimizes the very existence of the group and conceals its mundane struggle for power, territory and wealth through reference to divine authority.     

Transnational Discursive Opportunities and Social Movement Risk Frames Opposing GMOs

Research on social movement frames has been cumulative. Recently, scholars started studying the structural incentives and constraints for claim-makers by relying on the concept of discursive opportunity structure (DOS) while bringing the public sphere and the media to the centre of analysis of political contention. This article draws on these literatures to investigate social movement campaigns against genetically modified (GM) crops and pesticides in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. First, it argues that there is a transnational DOS that provides structural incentives and constraints to frame risks in symbolic struggles to define GM crops. Next, based on a content analysis of national newspapers, it describes the use of risk frames in national public discourses. Finally, it addresses the question of how this transnationalized DOS is framed by the media by looking at the discursive opportunities for social movements as well as other collective actors in their framing disputes. The study provides evidence of a transnationalization of public debates and offers explanations for national variations by resorting to other components of the DOS such as national policy discourse, timing of political agendas, media structure and culture. It concludes by recognizing the need to consider the various dimensions of opportunity structures for movement action, i.e. political, discursive, and economic, and their relative degree of transnationalization or autonomy over global forces.     

W. E. B. Du Bois at the center: from science,civil rights movement,to Black Lives Matter

I am honoured to present the 2016 British Journal of Sociology Annual Lecture at the London School of Economics. My lecture is based on ideas derived from my new book, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. In this essay I make three arguments. First, W.E.B. Du Bois and his Atlanta School of Sociology pioneered scientific sociology in the United States. Second, Du Bois pioneered a public sociology that creatively combined sociology and activism. Finally, Du Bois pioneered a politically engaged social science relevant for contemporary political struggles including the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement.     

Middle Class Identity in the Modern World: How Politics and Economics Matter

It is widely accepted that people tend to identify with the middle classes regardless of their social class position. Nevertheless, this “middle class identity bias” is not equally prominent in all western democracies. The goal of this article is to assess the role of political and economic conditions in shaping this phenomenon. By exploring the relationship between class identity and national context in 15 modern societies, I address two main questions: (1) how individual‐level income affects where people place themselves in the class system, and (2) how national political and economic context affects this relationship. In doing so, I offer several important findings. First, although there is a positive relationship between income and class identification in all 15 societies, middle class identification is weakest when income inequality is high. Consistent with previous findings, the results suggest that economic development has a positive impact on class identity. The results also uncover a role for political ideology by suggesting a lingering affect of Communist rule. Even after controlling for economic development and income inequality, respondents in former Communist countries are more likely than others to identify as belonging to a low social class.     

English as a medium of instruction and the discursive construction of elite identity

Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.     

Social Movements and Socio-Political Change in Africa: The Ufungamano Initiative and Kenyan Constitutional Reform Struggles (1999–2005)

This article analyses the Ufungamano Initiative, a broad-based movement involved in constitutional reform struggles in Kenya. By analysing the rise, operations, achievements, and challenges of the Initiative, I argue that contemporary constitutional reform struggles in Kenya were societal responses to an avaricious political and economic class. It is further argued that the movement resulted from a fragmented elite consensus that widened political opportunities for contentious politics and therefore forced concessions for popular engagement in re-defining the relationship between the people and the political class. Ultimately, the Ufungamano Initiative’s power eroded as a result of multiple competing parochial interests in the movement.