Engineering confederalism for Iraq

This article examines Iraqi political developments in the last few years. It argues that unless a constitutional mechanism for proper dispersal of political powers across Iraq's regions and branches of its government is developed quickly, it may become too late for defeating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, stemming the sectarian and ethnic conflicts, overcoming its perpetual crises of governance or for keeping Iraq united. We suggest that a confederal structure is a better and lasting political solution for Iraq than federal or other structural configurations. We also argue that power-sharing and consensus must be intertwined directly into the constitutional fabric of the political structure.     

现代国家建构进程中的土地制度变动

从土地关系的角度来看,现代国家建构的进程中地权的内涵和结构都发生了深刻的变动。从西欧来看,在古代土地的政治权和经济权实际上是统一的,土地权力同时也是土地权利;在现代国家建构的过程中,领土主权成为国际秩序的基础,土地权力成为公法的客体,土地权利成为国家法律保护下的完整产权。当这一外生的逻辑框架套用到中国的时候,领土主权得以确立,但土地权力并没有完全撤出地权体系当中,而是直接地干预了土地权利的设立和分配,这成为理解近现代中国土地政治问题的一个基本线索。     

和谐社会构建过程中的民主政治建设

现代民主政治作为人类政治智慧的结晶和现代文明的标志对和谐社会的构建意义重大。民主政治是程序政治、透明政治、宽容政治、法治政治。它为和谐社会提供了必须的制度基础。改革开放以来,社会主义民主政治建设取得了巨大成就,但在构建和谐社会的今天仍然存在一些问题。我们要把握好解决问题的着眼点,找到解决问题的有效路径。在和谐社会的构建过程中发挥民主政治的重要作用,使民主政治与和谐社会相得益彰。     

“To get the word out”: LGBTQ+ Young adults’ motivations for participating in qualitative research studies

Understanding why socially marginalized individuals, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ+) people, participate in research can improve qualitative research designs, as well as social services and policies. In providing a participant-centered foundation, we interviewed 65 LGBTQ+ young adults and asked “Why are certain LGBTQ+ young adults motivated to engage in qualitative social science studies?” Many LGBTQ+ young people said they were committed to enacting social change and promoting advocacy. Participants also highlighted supporting scientific research and knowledge production. Finally, LGBTQ?+ participants engaged with research to introspectively analyze their identity development processes. These findings can facilitate access to socially vulnerable and underrepresented groups through a methodological focus on participant benefits.     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

Depoliticising literature,politicising diversity: ethno-racial boundaries in Dutch literary professionals’ aesthetic repertoires

Although still a neglected area, over the years a growing body of sociological research on the position of ethno-racial minorities in Western artistic fields has emerged. With this article we aim to contribute to this research area by focusing on ethno-racial diversity in the Dutch literary field. Through in-depth interviews, we analyse how gatekeepers mobilise specific cultural repertoires and by doing so draw ethno-racial boundaries when discussing acquisition, assessing quality and positioning themselves in the literary field. We argue that literary publishers and other professionals (selectively) employ an ‘old school’ modernist repertoire that especially values the formal aspects of literary products, by which non-white writers and publishers concerned with diversity are often positioned in an identity politics framework. Their work is said to take in a less prestigious ‘political’/’subjective’ position rather than a ‘literary’/‘universal’ one. As such, this paper informs on how gatekeepers’ practices shape the position of non-white authors in the Dutch literary field.     

Whose ‘wee country’?: identity politics and sport in Northern Ireland

This article responds to calls in this journal for increased attention to identity, culture, power and sport. It explores, for the first time, the lived realities of identity politics in a divided society, through interviews with 12 self-declared Irish nationalists and republicans that represented Northern Ireland. Important insights are revealed into national eligibility decisions for either Irish team, motivated mainly by ‘shop window’ visibility and being seen as the best of a peer group. Political and sporting nationalisms were not necessarily analogous. A significant original finding is that the lived experiences of being closer to ‘the other’ resulted in an overall reinforcement rather than dissolution of difference. Visual and oral ‘national’ symbols such as flag, and especially anthem, delineated such difference, being symbolic walls of the mind. ‘Our wee country’ was thus a polarised and polarising fantasy shield. The article concludes by reconsidering the role of sport as a lens through which to examine identity and its’ place as part of the ‘problem’ and ‘solution’.     

巴迪欧的元政治学--一种反政治哲学的姿态

当代政治哲学陷入了判断者和行动者的两难困境,其原因在于：一是它通过商谈的方式达成共识;二是它在政治哲学评判时所遵循的伦理标准和共通感。元政治学解决了政治哲学的这一困境,它独辟蹊径地以数学本体论为奠基,实现了将政治作为真之政治的目的。而实现真之政治需要做的是协调政治与国家、政治与主体和政治与哲学的关系,最终清除一种政治的幻想,走出一条通向真之政治的可能性道路。     

#IAmNotAfraidToSayIt: stories of sexual violence as everyday political speech on Facebook

ABSTRACT

The debate about the power and influence of networked publics often focuses on large-scale political events, activist campaigns and protest activity – the more visible forms of political engagement. On the other hand, digitally mediated activism is often questioned and sometimes derided as a lesser form of dissent, as it is easier to engage in, highly affective, and offers few assurances of sustainability of the change it calls for. But what about everyday political speech online, where social media platforms can contribute to a personalisation of politics? Can social media users express their views online and make a difference? This paper analyses around 3500 Facebook posts stemming from the #ЯНеБоюсьСказати (Ukrainian for #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt) online campaign that was started in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook in July 2016 by a local activist to raise awareness of how widespread sexual violence and sexual harassment are in the Ukrainian society. The paper argues that networked conversations about everyday rights and affective stories about shared experiences of injustice, underpinned by the affordances of social media platforms for sharing and discussing information and participating in everyday politics, can emerge as viable forms of networked feminist activism and can have real impact on the discursive status quo of an issue, both in the digital sphere and beyond it.     

The privacy paradox: how market privacy facilitates government surveillance

Although most surveillance studies scholars assume privacy is antithetical to surveillance, critics have recently warned that privacy-based criticisms may facilitate surveillance. That being said, we do not yet have data that show whether privacy claims were used in the past to legitimate government surveillance. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing claims made over one of the U.S.’s most controversial surveillance issues: government control over encryption technologies. A review of Congressional hearings and statements on the Congressional Record (n?=?112) reveals that from 1993 to 1999, public debates were dominated by a market liberalization discourse in which participants supported loosening encryption controls as a way to protect privacy from criminal intrusions in market transactions. Also playing a role was a strong skepticism toward government power and a preference for markets as managers of crime prevention. Challenged by these critiques, lawmakers withdrew regulatory proposals and spent the following decade working quietly with private firms to ensure law enforcement surveillance capability. These findings show the expansion of privacy for consumers and entrepreneurs has in fact been used to achieve the contraction of privacy from law enforcement and intelligence agencies.