The fourth stage of social democracy

Theory and Society - This article examines the political crisis of social-democratic parties in Western Europe in light of its impact on the social-democratic emancipatory project, and asks whether...     

Social work,postmodernism, and marxism

This article sets out to question two dominant trends in social work theorizing: ‘pure postmodernism and those attempts to revitalize emancipatory social work by combining elements of postmodernism with elements of a broadly Althusserian Marxism. The article starts by addressing the foundations of postmodern theorizing in social work, rejecting its claims for emancipatory theory. It proceeds to look at the concern with language and identity within this paradigm and suggests that, as formulated, neither offers an adequate understanding of the material hardship and oppressions facing clients. Writing from a classical Marxist perspective, the authors argue that the influence of postmodernism is a backward step in trying to understand the poverty, oppression, and inequality facing the majority of social work clients.     

Taking the democratic subject seriously

This article has two objectives. The first is to examine the post‐Marxist concept of the democratic subject, which I argue requires criticism and revision if it is to be coherently integrated into the post‐Marxist theory of democracy itself. The second is to examine the national–democratic project as proposed by the ANC and its allies in terms of this conceptual analysis of the democratic subject. It is argued that a ‘democratic turn’ has occurred in the national democratic project, but that national democratic subjectivity is still caught up in a fantasy of absolute political truth and closure, which interrupts its democratic practice.     

Disturbing Binaries in Political Thought: Silence as Political Activism

‘Keeping silent’ can be a meaningful political event, a form of political activism that generates new political subjectivities and alters existing realities by reconfiguring power relations. To flesh out this argument, this paper attends to a particular silent protest and affirms it as a tactic employed by an emergent political collectivity to make itself perceptible, declare an injustice and challenge institutional power. As such, the silent event under scrutiny does not merely invite a turning of our attention to a practice that breaks the association of the political subject with the speaking subject; it also invites a reconsideration of what we are accustomed to accept as political activism. ‘Keeping silent’ is a critical practice, indeed, because it manifests an alternative possibility of being and acting; in so doing, it disrupts established patterns of thought and practice, and more specifically the rigid distinction between speech and silence.     

Editorial: The Urgent Need for Global Action to Combat Climate Change

Abstract

Within the study of global politics and global political economy there has been an increase in literature within the last few years on the growth of resistance movements geared toward challenging the hegemony of US-inspired neoliberalism. This article questions much of the normative literature that is emerging, particularly from international political economy, on the nature of resistance and the anti-globalization movement. Using the case of Britain as an example, it argues that it is necessary to assess the various parts of the movement before any claim to counter-hegemony or counter-movement can be made. By looking at the various fragmented anti-globalization strategies and struggles that have been articulated within Britain, we also warn that any potential progressive or emancipatory ‘counter’ project is likely to suffer both from potential reactionary forces and from the lack of a clear transformative agenda.     

The power of discourse: Michel Foucault and critical theory

Abstract

The debate that contrasts Marxism and the work of Michel Foucault often overlooks that both projects share a political and ethical commitment. Both have moreover engaged that commitment by challenging what Marx called ‘traditional ideas’, viewing them as historically compilcit with the exercise of power. This ‘radical rupture’ with traditional ideas has been the hallmark of the critical theory project since The Communist Manifesto. By challenging traditional notions of power and language, however, Michel Foucault went further than the Marxist tradition in carrying out the critical theory project. Foucault's alternative ideas of discourse/practice and of power as ‘positive’ are moreover intricately linked in a way that has not been sufficiently appreciated. This is evident in a genealogy of Foucault's early work, where neither notion is able to take hold in the absence of the other. It only after The Archaeology of Knowledge, where Foucault rethought the relationship of language to reality, that he was able to formulate the notion of power as positive in works to come. This link should cause us to rethink our relationship to Foucault's work, of it to Marxism, and of the critical theory project to the power.     

Civil Society and Public Relations: Not So Civil After All

Recent articles appearing in communication outlets such as Human Communication Research and Public Relations Review celebrate the emancipatory power of civil society projects as the solution to the primitive forms of totalitarian governance in Third World nations, suggesting the central role of public relations scholars and practitioners in development communication. Having embraced the mantra of civil society, these public relations scholars suggest that the concept of civil society offers a paradigm shift in the field of development communication by facilitating "true" participatory communication. This article takes a critical approach to the rhetoric of civil society and points out that the civil society trope is not a novel innovation in the field of development communication. Using the narratives of the Philippines, Chile, and Nicaragua, it is demonstrated that civil society serves the goals of the transnational elite and actively participates in the marginalization of the Third World participant; the subaltern subject in the Third World exists outside the realm of civil society in its cracks and fissures. The author takes a political economic approach to problematize civil society efforts and draw out the linkages among civil society, colonialism, and transnational market hegemony. Finally, subaltern studies are offered as an alternative point for communication scholars interested in understanding the communicative practices in the marginalized spaces of the world.     

Max Weinreich,assimilation and the social politics of Jewish nation-building

Through an analysis of the methodological and theoretical writings of Max Weinreich that were devoted to the inter-war Jewish youth research programme at the Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO), this article discusses the ideological and political assumptions that lay behind this scientific project. Deconstructing the main research categories of the project, the author presents ways in which Weinreich and his associates constructed the Jewish nation and its place in the new inter-war political and social reality. This reality was seen in a complex manner, as a simultaneous chance for Jewish modernisation, upward mobility, productivisation, and as a response to the threat of modern state institutions that were introducing discriminatory policies, and, most importantly, assimilation. The last process was seen as the biggest danger, which could fragment and finally even dissolve the essentialist, secular and national model of Jewish community as envisioned by Max Weinreich and YIVO. The author shows how the essentialist vision of the nation omnipotent in inter-war Poland (among both Polish and Jewish communities) introduced unresolved tension between the need for social and cultural integration of the Jews, which was important for Weinreich and his circle, and the simultaneous aim of building a culturally and politically coherent Jewish nation. Further discussion shows how this kind of perception of social reality transformed a scientific research project into a kind of social intervention and nation-building programme, comparable to the ideologies of Jewish national secularist political parties. While presenting itself as a universal, national institution and addressing its call to all Jewish youth, YIVO promoted a particular political view of the Jewish nation and its tradition, history and religion. By engaging Jewish youth in a research programme devoted to its “personality,” one of the hidden aims of the project was to influence the political and social consciousness of Eastern Europe's Jewish youth.     

Disembodied politics: commitment and formal distance in Rancière*

Abstract

In light of the theme and concerns of the present collection of essays, we may ask whether ‘distance in general’, and ‘critical distance in particular’ (Fredric Jameson), has truly disappeared with postmodernity. Proposing an immediate and interruptive political engagement with local issues, Jacques Rancière’s articulation of political mobilisation does seem to confirm this claim. Upon further inspection, however, his emancipatory politics repeat the same mistake of valuing an abstract universal at the expense of a concrete particular, however paradoxical this may seem at first sight. The present article develops this thesis in three moments. On the first hand, it highlights Rancière’s notion of conflict as being institutive of politics. Secondly, it connects this ‘sensible’, and Rancière’s understanding of politics as being aesthetic, to Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetics’. The French author sees in the leading section of the first Critique the grounding possibility of (I) freeing up time and space within the social realm; (II) the representation of a common political surface that can be reshaped; (III) political equality; (IV) emancipation. The last section shows how this recourse to the transcendental subject in Rancière’s politics follows and embraces a traditional position in the history of philosophy whereby identity is denigrated at the profit of a disembodied universalism.     

‘Africanisation’, African identities and emancipation in contemporary South Africa

This article problematises the concept of ‘Africanisation’ as a response to colonial conquest and apartheid rule, bearing both political and knowledge consequences. It aims to rescue ‘Africanisation’ from essentialist notions, but at the same time to show how paradigms cannot be simply applied where they derive from quite different experiences. The article introduces modes of differentiating concepts that are dynamic, as opposed to static, singular and unmediated meanings that bedevil any emancipatory project. The tendency to see a moment in the life of a concept as having a settled and finalised meaning renders the qualities of democracy, and other similar liberating concepts, as settled though their meaning is never finally realised. While colonialism marginalised and devalued local knowledges, the national liberation project sought unity/homogenisation, which tended to deny distinct identities, as is largely the case today. There remains hostility to pluralism at a social and political level and a failure to recognise autonomous identities unconnected to the state or the ruling organisation, the African National Congress (ANC). The tendency towards static notions of custom and paradigms that do not derive from the experiences of African women, in particular, has tended to erase the voices of women or prejudice the emancipation of women from patriarchal oppression. Africanisation, the article proposes, must be located through an ongoing dialogue between dynamic local knowledges and a range of other explanatory tools.     

Stuart Hall's pessimism of the intellect,optimism of the will: reflections on an intellectual life

Stuart Hall was a seminal figure in the development of cultural studies and his death in 2014 has left an intellectual and political void. This article, based on a memorial talk, offers a number of perspectives on Hall’s life and work: the relationship between his speeches/interviews and his written work; the cultural and political context of cultural studies’ emergence; the contradictory and productive relationship between cultural studies and Marxism; the centrality of ‘conjunctural analysis’ to the project of cultural studies; the continuing relevance of the recently republished book Policing the Crisis; the responsibilities of intellectuals to make ideas matter in the world beyond the academy, and the political nature of Hall’s version of cultural studies.     

The institutional project of neo-liberal globalism: The case of the WTO

This article examines the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on domestic trade policies and practices. It shows that protectionist measures, including those practiced by the United States, have been effectively challenged, and consequently restricted, due to the WTO strengthened dispute settlement procedures. I show that the new procedures affected the substantive policy outcomes by changing the political influence of competing actors. Specifically, I identify four transformations affecting the political influence of participants: the re-scaling of political authority, the judicialization of inter-state relations, the institutionalization of the international organization, and the structural internationalization of the state. Based on this case, the article offers a view of globalization as an institutional project. This view emphasizes the political dimension of the process of globalization; it suggests that this project was facilitated by transforming the institutional arrangements in place; and it identifies the contradictions inherent in it both to U.S. hegemony and to the globalization project itself.     

Disabled citizens as researchers – Challenges and benefits of collaboration for effective action and change

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the evaluation of an initial pilot for a collaborative research project undertaken in an English county between a service user-led Coalition of Disabled People, the local authority and local university. The project sought to map the assets and resources for/of disabled people in their local community as well as needs and gaps, to inform the Coalition’s strategic planning and raise awareness of disability issues across the county.

The article discusses an inclusive, co-productive approach using participatory action research. It focuses on experiences from the pilot stage of the project and considers how the authors worked together with the required knowledge exchange and power-sharing to recruit and train researchers with expertise from their personal experience of disability. Recruitment ensured they had relevant qualities and skills that could be developed, to increase their confidence, knowledge and skills set as researchers. They then undertook photo-elicited, semi-structured interviews with other disabled people, analysed findings and created photographic exhibitions for dissemination and awareness raising.

Demonstrating a commitment to emancipatory research and collective action for change, the discussion considers the promotion of shared values within the research team, and explores the benefits and challenges encountered during the process and how the particular stages were managed to achieve the beneficial outcomes of the pilot. The article seeks to add to the literature of participatory/emancipatory action research for social work.     

Confronting the politics of despair: Toward the reconstruction of progressive social work in a global economy and postmodern age

The emancipatory project of progressive social work as it was developed in the 1970s and early 1980s in Anglo-democracies has been brought into question on two fronts. First, the changing nature of capitalism from a post-war centralised form to a global decentralised form has rendered irrelevant much of the earlier analysis of capitalism which had been used by progressive social workers to develop emancipatory theories and practices at both the personal and political levels. Second, postmodern and poststructural thought have discredited many of the concepts (meta-narratives), ideals (universalisms) and discourses that underpinned the modernist development of progressive social work. This paper represents an attempt to contribute to the reformulation or reconstruction of a progressive form of social work that addresses both these challenges. The following elements of a reconstructed form of progressive social work are presented and discussed: bridging what is positive and liberating in the tradition of progressive social work with a postmodernist deconstruction of its problematic elements to the point where reconstruction is possible; identification of human needs that are universal and transcultural; new social movement theory; a revitalised public sector; anti-oppression as the framework for progressive social work; challenging and resisting the dominant order; and the constructive use of anger.     

WHAT IS THE MULTITUDE?

Nicholas Brown and Imre Szeman continue their conversation with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. (See ‘The Global Coliseum: On Empire’ in Cultural Studies, 16.2, (March 2002), p. 177–192). In this new interview they press the authors of Empire and Multitude on questions that have arisen both out of their own involvement with the theoretical issues generated by Empire and from new areas opened up by Multitude. Why is the multitude not a class? How can the unity of a political project be maintained in the multiplicity of the multitude? Is democracy still a project for the future? Can a political subject constitute itself outside the structure of sovereignty? In other words, what is the multitude?     

Researching youth culture and popular music: a methodological critique

In this article I argue the need for critical evaluation of qualitative research methodology in sociological studies of the relationship between youth culture and popular music. As the article illustrates, there is currently an absence of critical debate concerning methodological issues in this field of sociological research. In the first part of the article I begin to account for this absence by illustrating how early research on youth and music rejected the need for empirical research, relying instead on theories and concepts drawn from cultural Marxism. The second part of the article illustrates how the legacy of this early body of work in youth and music research manifests itself in current research which, although empirically grounded, is characterized by an almost total lack of engagement with methodological issues such as negotiating access to the field, management of field relations and ethical codes. Similarly problematic is the uncritical acceptance on the part of some researchers of their insider knowledge of particular youth musics and scenes as a means of gathering empirical data. In the final part of the article I focus on the issue of insider knowledge and the need for critical evaluation of its use as a methodological tool in field-based youth and music research.     

Passing through difference: C.L.R. James and Henry Lefebvre

ABSTRACT

This essay offers a comparative analysis of the work of Henri Lefebvre and C.L.R. James, both key contributors to the emergence of a humanist form of Marxism in the twentieth century. Independently of each other, both writers, I show, developed a mode of critique which emphasised capitalism’s dehumanizing social effects, and which rejected a merely instrumental or utilitarian political response. Consequently, both writers placed critical emphasis on those longings and demands made evident in the insurgent politics of everyday life and popular culture; in what both conceptualised as a search for ‘happiness‘. But at the same time, the comparison is important because it makes evident the extent of the divisive intellectual legacies of empire within European Marxism. Lefebvre’s work bears in itself the marks of a racialised understanding of human relations; the ’human’ of which he speaks is limited in ways that James challenged consistently.     

One hundred years of suffering? “Humanitarian crisis photography” and self-representation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Humanitarian images streaming from the ongoing conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are not “new”. In fact, contemporary aid and journalistic images strikingly mimic photographs created a century earlier during the Congo Reform Association’s humanitarian attack on Leopold II’s actions in the Congo Free State. This article explores the consistency of these photographic forms and their surrounding text, showing how the images of suffering are not simple reproductions of observed reality but carry personal, local and political meaning. By analysing image content as well as the subject and photographer’s experiences of image creation, this article expands beyond realist objectivity to encompass the subjects’ visual embodiment of subjective desires and expectations. Specifically, I examine how the photographic space composed of the photographer, camera and subject, becomes an intersection replete with competing expectations, hopes and tensions. To situate these images and their subjective, political and humanitarian weight within the DRC itself, I conclude with analysis of how the Congolese choose to present themselves to a different audience: themselves.     

Seeing for the state: the role of social scientists in China's ethnic classification project

This article proposes a new understanding of the Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie) undertaken in China's southwesternmost province of Yunnan in 1954 – a project in which social scientists and Communist Party cadres set out to determine which of the dozens, if not hundreds, of minority communities in the province would be officially recognized by the state. Specifically, this article argues that ethnologists and linguists played a far greater role in the Classification and early Chinese Communist governmentality than is typically assumed. The Chinese Communists did not teach themselves how to ‘see like a state,’ to use James Scott's formulation, at least not when it came to the fundamentally important problem of ethnic categorization. To the contrary, the history of the Classification project is one of an inexperienced Chinese state that was able to orient itself only by observing the world through the eyes of its social scientific advisors. The ‘mentality’ within early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ‘governmentality’ was, in the case of the 1954 Ethnic Classification, in large part the mentality of the comparative social sciences.