Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Official Discourse (official + discourse)
Selected AbstractsThe social construction of the participatory turn: The emergence of a norm in the European UnionEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2010SABINE SAURUGGER At the beginning of the 1990s a new discourse emerged at the European Union level, insisting on the necessity of ,civil society' participation in decision-making processes. Based on a ,strategic-constructivist' research design, this article addresses the question of the emergence of this participatory turn in the official discourse and its transformation into a norm. It argues that the continued activism of an elite forum, consisting of political and administrative actors as well as academics, created the momentum that brought the concerned actors to accept the participatory norm and to play the roles required by it. However, due to internal competition amongst norm entrepreneurs, and a changed political situation, this norm is still contested, making it difficult to assess how its implementation will function. [source] The Magic of the Populace: An Ethnography of Illegibility in the South African Immigration BureaucracyPOLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2010Colin Hoag Recent anthropological accounts of the state have demonstrated the potential for danger or illegibility in the public's encounter with the state. Much of this work has taken the perspective of the public, however, and less has been said about how functionaries of the state perceive their interactions with the public. This perspectival bias needs to be overcome through ethnographies of the state and of state bureaucracies in everyday practice. This article examines the Immigration Services Branch of the South African Department of Home Affairs, a state bureaucracy widely deemed "illegible" by South Africans and non-South Africans alike. It documents some of the factors that inform the actions of street-level bureaucrats, illustrating how bureaucrats develop systems of meaning to help them mitigate the challenges posed by an unpredictable populace and management hierarchy. These systems serve to stabilize these two unstable entities, but they also enable officials to act in ways that might run counter to official discourse while simultaneously upholding its legitimacy. Their stabilization efforts therefore incite a destabilization of the state, leading it to appear as "magical" or "illegible" to the public. [source] Structural Adjustment, Spatial Imaginaries, and "Piracy" in Guatemala's Apparel IndustryANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Kedron Thomas Abstract This article examines how urban violence influences the everyday lives of Guatemalan Maya entrepreneurs who make nontraditional clothing to sell in highland markets and Guatemala City. How urban space is imagined and experienced among apparel producers reflects a process of class differentiation linked to Guatemala's entrance into international trade and legal agreements. Realities of uneven access and unequal resource distribution allow some producers to take advantage of formal markets and official networks in the capital city, while others avoid the city streets out of fear. Such inequalities are obscured when entrepreneurs who benefit from urban connections talk about relative success in terms of a moral division between those who engage in brand piracy and those who do not. In line with an official discourse that blames "pirates," gangs, and other marginalized groups for the country's social and economic ills, apparel producers who do not copy popular brands often view those who do as immoral and illegal. The case study presented here is fruitful ground for theorizing how cultural representations of urban space influence market strategies and moral logics amidst processes of economic and legal restructuring. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 24, Number 4.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2008August 200 Front cover and back cover caption, volume 24 issue 4 Front cover Front cover: Front cover The front cover of this issue illustrates Vasiliki P. Neofotistos' article on the 2006 film Borat: Cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan. In the film, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist, who leaves his country on a project funded by the Ministry of Information to travel with his film producer to ,US and A, the greatest country in the world' and make a ,movie film' about American culture, with the putative aim of gaining insights into what makes America great and applying them to Kazakhstan. The film has generated contrasting reactions, ranging from CNN's praise of it as ,most excellent comedy' to lawsuits filed by, among others, residents of the Romanian village in which part of the film was shot. Borat has been condemned as deeply offensive to women, Kazakhs, fraternity brothers and Jews alike. In this issue Neofotistos focuses on some of the lessons that Western audiences could potentially take away from the film, using the notion of the grotesque as a tool to read Borat as an allegory of America that invites us to revisit aspects of our own culture and hence as a highly appropriate film for our times. Back cover Back cover: ,FORTRESS' SOUTH AFRICA? A South African and a foreigner find common ground in Islam. The two men are about to enter a mosque in downtown Pretoria for Friday prayers. Prayers at this mosque provide a meeting ground for Muslim men and women from all over Africa, and from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Foreigners attending the mosque range from diplomats to illegal immigrants. Significant numbers of black South Africans from all walks of life have converted to Islam in recent years. In this issue John Sharp shows that there are many circumstances in which - as in this photograph - South Africans and foreigners from elsewhere in Africa pursue shared interests peacefully. Anthropological field research points to the range of these contexts, which have largely been ignored by commentators attempting to explain the episode of mass ,xenophobic' violence that wracked South African cities and towns in May 2008. Explanations focus on the xenophobic attitudes of ordinary South Africans, and link these attitudes to competition for resources between locals who are poor and their equally poor counterparts from further north. Recent research indicates, however, not only that relationships between poor South Africans and poor foreigners are more complex than most commentators allow, but also that South African xenophobia begins at the top, among the leaders of the ANC government and the black and white elites whose interests it serves. Sharp argues that a newly-issued report on the xenophobic violence by a government-orientated think tank reproduces the dominant xenophobic discourse in its recommendation that the state should construct a ,Fortress SA' with impenetrable borders, while seeking to mask its adherence to official discourse by representing its proposals as a response to the xenophobic attitudes of poor South Africans. As Sharp suggests, anthropological research might offer a more nuanced response to the issues. [source] ,Fortress SA': Xenophobic violence in South AfricaANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2008John Sharp There are many circumstances in which South Africans and foreigners from elsewhere in Africa pursue shared interests peacefully. Anthropological field research points to a range of these circumstances, which have largely been ignored by commentators attempting to explain the episode of mass,xenophobic'violence that wracked South African cities and towns in May 2008. Explanations such as the one criticised in this article focus on the xenophobic attitudes of ordinary South Africans, and link these attitudes to competition for resources between locals who are poor and their equally poor counterparts from further north. Recent research indicates, however, not only that relationships between poor South Africans and poor foreigners are more complex than most commentators allow, but also that South African xenophobia begins at the top, among the leaders of the ANC government and the black and white elites whose interests it serves. This article argues that a newly-issued report on the xenophobic violence by a government-orientated think tank reproduces the dominant xenophobic discourse in its recommendation that the state should construct a,Fortress SA'with impenetrable borders. Yet this report seeks to mask its adherence to official discourse by representing its proposals as a response to the xenophobic attitudes of poor South Africans. [source] The Exclusion of (Failed) Asylum Seekers from Housing and Home: Towards an Oppositional DiscourseJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2010Lorna Fox O'Mahony ,Housing', the practical provision of a roof over one's head , is experienced by users as ,home', broadly described as housing plus the experiential elements of dwelling. Conversely, being without housing, commonly described as ,homelessness', is experienced not only as an absence of shelter but in the philosophical sense of ,ontological homelessness' and alienation from the conditions for well-being. For asylum seekers, these experiences are deliberately and explicitly excluded from official law and policy discourses. This article demonstrates how law and policy is propelled by an ,official discourse' based on the denial of housing and the avoidance of ,home' attachments, which effectively keeps the asylum seeker in a state of ontological homelessness and alienation. We reflect on this exclusion and consider how a new ,oppositional discourse' of housing and home , taking these considerations into account , might impact on the balancing exercise inherent to laws and policies concerning asylum seekers. [source] Discourses of Work,Life Balance: Negotiating ,Genderblind' Terms in OrganizationsGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2005Janet Smithson This article examines current debates about gender equality, work-life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers' and organizational discourses of flexible working and work,life balance with managers' and employees' talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender-neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around gendered explanations and assumptions. For example, a ,generic female parent' is constructed in relation to work,life balance and flexible working yet participants routinely maintain that gender makes no difference within their organization. We consider the effects of these accounts; specifically the effect on those who take up flexible working, and the perceived backlash against policies viewed as favouring women or parents. We argue that the location of work,life balance and flexibility debates within a gender-neutral context can in practice result in maintaining or encouraging gendered practices within organizations. Implications of this for organizations, for policymakers and for feminist researchers are discussed. [source] CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY IN BARCELONA'S PUBLIC PARKS,GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2009DAVID SAURÍ ABSTRACT. In this article we explore the relationships between public parks and a broad interpretation of sustainability, taking as a case study the city of Barcelona, Spain. Recent official discourses in Barcelona insist on sustainability as one of the fundamental assets of public parks. Yet whether these urban artifacts actually contribute to sustainability objectives in environmental and social terms remains to be examined. We compare two public parks in Barcelona-the Parc Joan Miró (1983), and the Parc de Diagonal Mar (2002),and show how, in the former, the integration of the social, political, and environmental dimensions of sustainability was largely achieved, whereas in the latter, only the environmental dimension appears to have been considered. [source] Sex in Health Education: Official Guidance for Schools in England, 1928,1977JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2-3 2004Jane Pilcher The article begins with an account of the origins of sex education in schools, and of why, in the early twentieth century, its inclusion in the health education curriculum was problematical. In the main section, the article examines the content of consecutive editions of the government published "handbooks of health education", and of an important supplementary guidance pamphlet, published during the Second World War. It traces the gradual shifts over time in official discourses of "sex education", and in the sets of understandings about children, sexuality and the role of parents, for example, which underlay them. The shifts in official guidance discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools are explained through locating changes in their broader social and political contexts, especially the impact of the Second World War on sexual morality and the post-war emergence of youth as a significant social grouping. The article concludes by evaluating the handbooks as a source for the history of school-based health and sex education and by drawing attention to the wider historical and sociological significance of official discourses on sex education. [source] Narratives of nationalism in Eritrea: research and revisionism*NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 20052003), Dedicated to the memory of Alex Naty (195 Eritrean politics is increasingly captured in competing narratives of nationalism. ,Official' narratives emphasize Eritrea's purported stability, orderliness, and uniqueness. This discourse defends and supports the current government's policies. In contrast, recent research challenges those policies, and contributes to a nationalist counter-narrative. This article seeks to investigate the discursive power of conventional narratives and the implications of new research for accounts of state and nation-building in Eritrea. The Eritrean case , one of the newest states in the world , intersects with and informs a number of broader debates on nationalism and nation-building: the impact of globalization, secessionism, and war as well as the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. The penetration of state and nation-building projects into every sector of Eritrean life means that all social research is deeply politicised. Journalists and researchers have long been key players in the contested process of conceptualising Eritrean nation-hood, and this continues in the post-liberation period. Research thus both buttresses and challenges official discourses, even where it is not explicitly framed in terms of nationalism. [source] D/developments after the MeltdownANTIPODE, Issue 2010Gillian Hart Abstract:, Part of what makes the current conjuncture so extraordinary is the coincidence of the massive economic meltdown with the implosion of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, and the reappearance of US liberal internationalism in the guise of "smart power" defined in terms of Diplomacy, Development, and Defence. This essay engages these challenges through a framework that distinguishes between "Development" as a post-war international project that emerged in the context of decolonization and the Cold War, and capitalist development as a dynamic and highly uneven process of creation and destruction. Closely attentive to what Gramsci calls "the relations of force at various levels", my task in this essay is to suggest how the instabilities and constant redefinitions of official discourses and practices of Development since the 1940s shed light on the conditions in which we now find ourselves. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||