Indifference and repetition: occupation testimonies and left-wing despair

As despair is increasingly seeping into leftist politics in many parts of the world, its long-held image as a hindrance to political activism still prevents the thriving literature on the politics of feeling from adequately theorizing this collective posture. This article seeks to probe the public manifestations of left-wing despair by looking at the despairing dispositions that have evolved in the Israeli Left in response to its failure to undermine Israel’s regime of occupation, using the coping modes this failure has sparked as a conduit for complicating the negative image of despair in politics. The analysis draws on two documentaries that showcase soldiers’ testimonies – Z32 and Censored Voices – in which the compulsive but fruitless repetition of witnessing is brought to the fore and serves as a platform for the enactment of despair as a distinctively public disposition. In dialogue with Wendy Brown’s notion of left melancholy and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, the article propounds despair – understood not as an affect, a feeling, or an emotion, but as a recursively performed posture – as an alternative analytic grid for grasping the contemporary agonies of the Left. Drawing on the Israeli documentaries, it demonstrates that despair may be propelled and perpetuated by two kinds of crises – a crisis of movement and a crisis of belonging. Taking both modalities as evidence that despair does not necessarily involve a withdrawal into the self and may transpire through public acts of care, the article claims, using Bonnie Honig’s work on public things, that the ground for the assessment of despair should be shifted from its presumed impact on political actors to the tangible imprints it leaves in the public settings in which action takes place.     

Large-scale commonness is the best predictor of bird species presence in European cities

Urban Ecosystems - Urban bird communities are homogenized across large spatial scales, suggesting that the urban environment acts as an environmental filter. We hypothesize that large scale...     

The Tunnel at the End of the Light: the Crisis of Transition in Hungary

The economic, political and social transition processes of the last two decades, far from being in harmony, clearly have a detrimental rather than an enriching influence on each other. These processes will never become harmonised just by themselves in a natural fashion. The worst obstacle of a successful transformation is that the chief actors, such as the government, the market and the representatives of the society. The Prince, the Merchant and the Citizen do not show the necessary commitment, competence and determination to create a new, effective type of partnership. This is a challenge which urgently demands answers on all levels of governance, economic and social life. This must be done in the frames of local communities, and on the regional, the European and the global levels. Nearly twenty years after the political turnabout, Hungary now needs a new social contract and must lay down the ethical, political, institutional and intellectual foundations for its twenty-first century democracy.

ASOBI IN ACTION

In the past 30 years, play (asobi) has become the subject of a heated ideological debate in urban Japan, reflecting processes of cultural transformation. During these years, a late consumer culture characterized by an incessant pursuit of playlike hedonistic pleasures has reached its apotheosis within a conservative social context that maintains high levels of conformity and prioritizes production. It is against the background of these sociocultural dynamics that the cultural conceptualization and appreciation of play have been negotiated between play as a subsidiary activity complementary to work life, confined within boundaries, and play as a phenomenon of greatest personal significance, hardly constrained by time or space. These dialectics have influenced collective imaginaries, transforming play into a symbolic activity through which people can experience and reproduce cultural rhetoric about social distinctions, values and priorities.     

Asset Building in Rural Communities: The Experience of Individual Development Accounts*

Abstract This study examines the unique experiences of low‐income rural participants in an asset building program‐the Individual Development Account. Using data from the American Dream Demonstration, this study addresses three main questions: (1) What are the individual characteristics associated with saving outcomes among rural IDA participants? (2) What are the program characteristics associated with savings among rural participants? (3) What are the policy implications for supporting asset building in rural areas? To answer these questions we conduct an Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis. The results suggest that low‐income rural participants have the ability and willingness to save toward the accumulation of assets in IDAs. Looking at individual characteristics, home ownership appears to be an important predictor of savings. In addition, this study suggests that program characteristics (financial education, peer group meetings, match rate, direct deposit, and monthly saving target), not merely individual characteristics, are important in explaining saving performance for this group.     

Liquid advocacy: Social welfare advocacy in neoliberal times

This article examines current inconsistent trends in social welfare advocacy literature. Some studies show evidence of widespread engagement in advocacy by nonprofit organisations, while other studies conversely offer evidence of limited advocacy activities. Another controversial aspect stems from the question whether governmental funding undermines the extent to which nonprofits engage in advocacy. We argue that these findings reflect the contradictory impact of neoliberal governance on social welfare advocacy. The article highlights and discusses three interrelated components of neoliberalism and their impact on current social welfare advocacy: marketisation, precariousness and commodification. Neoliberalism has propelled a model of market-driven civil society that has remade the practice of social welfare advocacy in contradictory ways. With its complex rationales, neoliberalism has simultaneously undermined the ability of nonprofits to engage in advocacy but in a paradoxical way has also created conditions that induce these organisations to practice advocacy. Implications for practice and research on social welfare advocacy are discussed.     

What's Your Story? Listening to the Stories of Mothers from Multi-Problem Families

The use of a narrative approach in research and treatment enables a close-up view of the world of the client from his/her point of view. This approach opens a door to a differential understanding of states of distress and is particularly relevant with regard to distressed populations for whom verbal communication is the natural means of expression and much richer than any more formal means. The following article offers narrative analyses of stories of three women, mothers of multi-problem families, whose children's development is at risk. The stories were recorded during a research project which studied the responses of the participating women in an intervention program called Yachdav. The narrative analysis reveals the women's subjective perception of their situation of stress and of the methods of assistance available to them. The article examines the contribution of the narrative approach to the understanding of the point of view of the distressed segments of the population as a means of creating an alliance in assistance reception relations.     

Reverse Mortgage Fraud Against Seniors: Recognition and Education of a Burgeoning Problem

With the senescent population and the popularity of aging in place, many seniors are attracted to reverse mortgages to plan for retirement and to maintain their existing housing situation. Although theoretically reverse mortgages represent a viable investment product for those considering retirement, several pitfalls are possible for seniors, who can be unsuspecting victims of fraud. This article provides information detailing the etymology of fraud activities within this market through a storyboard that depicts the various stages of the fraud process. It is hoped that such a tool can enhance the education of consumers on this mortgage product.