国家的策略性:农业技术变迁中的政治因素——基于一个少数民族案例的研究

冬小麦推广是20世纪70年代西藏现代化的主要成就,小麦从少有种植一跃成为西藏第二大作物。令人困惑的是,藏族农民最初曾强烈抵制小麦,两三年后却又成了国家政策的积极实践者。在此过程中,国家如何消解农民的抵制,怎样改造他们的观念?基于档案和口述史材料,本文认为政治运动发挥了关键作用：第一,广泛开展的阶级斗争打击了对新技术的抵制,分化了基层社会,农民间的相互监督使"弱者的武器"成为不可能;第二,政治运动具有思想改造和情感动员功能,它将小麦塑造成解放的象征,激发了农民的政治认同和实践热情。但是,政治运动对生产也有一定负作用,冬小麦推广在20世纪70年代后期走上了"盲信政治、无视现实"的歧途即与此有关。     

‘Nothing about us without us’: the emerging disability movement and advocacy in China

The disability movement and disabled persons’ self-help organizations (DPOs) are emerging in China, some of which succeeded in promoting policy and social changes with special strategies. Based on an original survey and interview, this article explains the development and survival strategies of China’s DPOs, and especially interprets some successful cases of social advocacy and policy advocacy in the emerging disability movement. It is hoped that scholars will pay more attention to the advocacy and public engagement of the disability community in non-western settings in the future.     

Tweeting India’s Nirbhaya protest: a study of emotional dynamics in an online social movement

Abstract

Previous research has recognized the role of emotions in protests and social movements in the offline world. Despite the current scenario of ubiquitous social media and ‘Twitter revolutions,’ our knowledge about the connections between emotions and online protests still remains limited. In this study, we examine whether online protest actions follow the same emotional groundwork for supporting and nurturing a social movement as in the offline world, and how these emotions vary across various stages of the social movement. Through a computer-assisted emotion analysis of 65,613 Twitter posts (tweets), posted during the Nirbhaya social movement (movement against the Delhi gang-rape incident) in India, we identified a strong resemblance between online emotional patterns and offline protest emotions as discussed in literature. Formal statistical testing of a range of emotions (negativity, positivity, anger, sadness, anxiety, certainty, individualism, collectivism, and achievement) demonstrates that they significantly differed across stages of the social movement; as such, they influenced the course of the online protest, resonating parallels with offline events. The findings highlight the importance of anger and anxiety in stirring the collective conscience, and identify that positive emotion was pervasive during the protest event. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Fetal movements: What are we telling women?

Problem

Information that women receive about the importance of monitoring fetal movements and what to do if there are changes is inconsistent and may not be evidence based.

The politics of gender in the UN Security Council resolutions on women,peace and security

Women’s groups have worked diligently to place gender and women’s vulnerability on the transnational security agenda. This article departs from the idea that negotiating and codifying gender and women’s vulnerability in terms of security represent a challenge to mainstream security contexts. By contrasting the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security with feminist theory, this article aims to analyze what is considered to be threatened when women’s vulnerability is negotiated. The article identifies two approaches to the gender/security nexus: gendering security, which involves introducing ideas regarding gender-sensitive policies and equal representation, and securitizing gender, which proceeds by locating rape and sexual violence in the context of war regulations. We demonstrate that, although these measures are encouraged with reference to women’s vulnerability, they serve to legitimize war and the male soldier and both approaches depoliticize gender relations.     

How the Right Usurped the Queer Agenda: Frame Co‐optation in Political Discourse

This article draws on a case study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and queer politics in Vermont to explain the conditions under which radical discourse gains and loses a public voice. In contrast to claims that the marginalization of queer discourse is due to silencing by LGBT rights activists or to litigation strategies, we argue that variation in queer discourse over time is the result of the co‐optation of queer discourse and goals by opponents. Extending the social movement literature on frame variation, we argue that opponents co‐opt discourse when they adopt aspects of the content of a movement's discourse, while subverting its intent. We show that conservative LGBT rights opponents co‐opted queer discourse. As a result, queer positions lost their viability as the discursive field in which those arguments were made was fundamentally altered. Because queer positions became less tenable, we see the withdrawal of queer discourse from the mainstream and alternative LGBT media. Our work both supports and builds on research on frame variation by demonstrating how discourse can change over time in response to the interplay between changing aspects of the political and cultural landscape and the discourse of opponents.     

Mighty Crime Victims: Victims' Rights and Neoliberalism in the American Conjuncture

Over the last 30 years, the victims' rights movement has expanded the role of victims in the American criminal justice system. As a result of this movement, judges, prosecutors and parole boards must now hear victims' views at all stages of the criminal justice process, including plea bargains, and sentencing and parole decisions. Legislative efforts have been spearheaded by victims' families, and legislation has been named after deceased victims. Also, victims' families can now view executions in states across the country. The victims' right movement assumes that the criminal justice system should privilege victims' interests over those of society. In so doing, it denies society as a consideration, which is tantamount to a denial of society itself. This article positions victims' rights' denial of society within the current conjuncture, marked as it is by the contradiction between neoliberalism and American liberalism. Victims' rights' denial of society is an expression of the denial of society implicit in American neoliberalism, which seeks to privilege individual interests over those of society. This paper argues that victims' rights is a powerful element of the neoliberal project for three reasons. First, victims' rights imputes the authority of legal discourse to neoliberalism's denial of society. Second, important actors in the rise of neoliberalism have also worked to establish victims' rights. Finally, victims' rights comprehensively circulates throughout America and offers powerful points of identification that incorporate Americans into the victims' rights formation. I explore the denial of society in three victims' rights practices: naming criminal legislation after crime victims and passing such laws in honour of victims; allowing victims' families to view executions; and prosecutors, judges and police personnel making legal decisions according to victims' wishes. I examine the consonant denial of society in three neoliberal practices – monetarism, supply-side economics and welfare reform – and demonstrate how neoliberal advocates like Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Paul Gann worked to advance victims' rights. I also describe the production, consumption and comprehensive circulation of victims' rights texts. Finally, I consider Cultural Studies' unique contribution to legal studies.     

Research initiation based on idea-circles: from research object to co-actor

This article details an evaluation of a research project based on participatory research methods organized by the Swedish Disability Federation from 2008 to 2011. In Sweden there has been a lack of productive dialogue with the traditional academic world and the question was raised whether proposals for future research would be different if disabled people formulated them. Nine idea-circles with disabled participants and invited researchers from fields of interest close to the participants produced ideas, developed out of the life experience of being a disabled person. These ideas were developed into 72 research drafts that often reflected key advocacy areas, rather than operationalized research issues. The adjustment from the familiar discourse of political struggle to discussion of research was a complicated process for many. When asked to prioritize among areas for research, the representatives from the disability movement chose areas that are not stressed in mainstream disability research in Sweden.     

On being unreasonable in modern society: are mental health problems special?

There are many grounds for arguing that people with a range of disabilities have more in common than they have differences. However, those grounds to date have not resulted in a unified social movement. This paper examines one possible reason for that lack of unity: the particular force of being unreasonable in modern society. However, being unreasonable is not limited to those with a psychiatric diagnosis, nor does a lack or loss of reason take a simple common form within that group: it is a highly nuanced and context-specific matter. This complexity is discussed in relation to a set of inter-related questions about legalism, morality and post-enlightenment concerns with order and rationality. The paper concludes with a discussion of scenarios available to new social movements concerned with disability.     

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.