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Political Practices (political + practice)
Selected AbstractsFantasies of Friendship in The Faerie Queene, Book IVENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 2 2007Melissa E. Sanchez For such members of the Sidney-Essex circle as Spenser, who supported monarchy as such but were uneasy about a number of specific policies, what historians have described as a move in the 1590s away from mid-century conciliar theories generated anxiety about the status of the nobility and the future of Protestantism. The erotic relations of the 1596 edition of The Faerie Queene register such concerns about the absolutist rhetoric of the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, most noticeably in the revised ending of Book III. Whereas the 1590 Book of Chastity concludes with Scudamour and Amoret merging into a hermaphroditic figure of mutual devotion, the 1596 version replaces this scene of conjugal bliss with a protracted narrative of Scudamour's despairing suspicion and Amoret's continued affliction. The nature of Amoret's loyalty, moreover, is itself complicated by the concluding cantos of Book IV, which reveal that the husband for whom she has willingly suffered was in fact the first of her assailants. The disproportion between Amoret's fidelity and Scudamour's desert in the 1596 versions of Books III and IV suggests that idealized equations of love, virtue, and suffering may have lulled Amoret into complicity in her own abuse. This revision is thus crucial to Spenser's project of fashioning a virtuous subject, for in apprehending the discrepancy between idealized narratives of mutual devotion and actual structures of unilateral sacrifice, the reader of The Faerie Queene may likewise come to recognize and resist the contradictions and inequities of late sixteenth-century political practice. [source] Agency in the Discursive ConditionHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2001Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth This article claims that postmodernity necessarily, and perhaps opportunely, undermines the bases upon which political democracy traditionally has rested; and that therefore some significant work must be done in order to redefine, restore, or otherwise reconfigure democratic values and institutions for a changed cultural condition. This situation presents the opportunity to explore the new options, positive openings, and discursive opportunities that postmodernity presents for political practice; for this the problem of agency provides a focal issue. The practices of postmodernity, taken together, represent substantial challenges, not just to this or that cherished habit, but to modernity itself and all its corollaries, including its inventions of objectivity, of "the individual" (miserable treasure), and of all the related values (project, capital, consensus and, above all, neutrality) which still underwrite so much of what we do as citizens, consumers, and professionals not to mention as more private persons, parents, and partners. Fortunately, postmodernity does not demolish all our most cherished beliefs, values, and practices; but it does require recognition of how those beliefs, values, and practices actually function and of what alternatives they suppress. [source] Political therapy: an encounter with Dr John Alderdice, psychotherapist, political leader and peer of the realmINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2009Graham Little Abstract This paper comprises an encounter by the author in 1992 with the distinguished Northern Ireland psychotherapist and political leader, The Lord Alderdice of Knock. Born in Northern Ireland in 1955, John Alderdice graduated in Medicine in 1978, and qualified as a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1983, followed by higher specialist training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Alderdice joined the Northern Ireland Alliance Party in 1978, and in 1987 was elected Party Leader. Raised to the peerage as Baron Alderdice in 1996, he was one of the key negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998. This 1997 paper includes the author's interview with Alderdice, together with his observations on Alderdice's two-handed psychoanalytic and political practice, his "political therapy". Drawing upon the author's roots as a Belfast-born Australian, the paper reflects on the possibilities of Alderdice's applied psychoanalysis , of politics "off the couch". Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Muenster City LibraryJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 3 2007Place, The Politics of Identity This article examines the understanding of territory, place, and identity as dynamic and sometimes disruptive processes and critiques the cultural politics that attempt to shape and hinder these processes in favor of clear and often nostalgic definitions. Controlling the appearance of the physical environment to ensure its correlation to history and the dominant cultural identity is one such powerful cultural political practice. Elaborating upon data collected from questionnaires, interviews, and a cognitive mapping exercise in an original case study of Muenster and its City Library conducted in 2001, this work demonstrates that place and identity are neither locked into nor the result of simply the appearances of already existing built forms, but are deeper, dynamic, and generative forces that have produced historical appearances and can produce others, dependent on time, context, and the people who engage a place. [source] Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British IndiaJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2001Anand S. Pandian Taking the hunt as both metaphor of rule and political practice, this paper compares the predatory exercises of two imperial formations in India: the late British Raj and the sixteenth-century Mughal empire. The British pursuit of man-eaters confronted feline terror with sovereign might, securing the bodies and hearts of resistant subjects through spectacles of responsible force. The Mughal hunt, on the other hand, took unruly nobles and chieftains as the objects of its fearful care, winning their obedient submission through the exercise of a predatory sovereignty. Both instances of ,predatory care' shed light on the troubling intimacy of biopolitical cultivation and sovereign violence. [source] Legitimizing the "War on Terror": Political Myth in Official-Level RhetoricPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Joanne Esch This paper argues that mythical discourse affects political practice by imbuing language with power, shaping what people consider to be legitimate, and driving the determination to act. Drawing on Bottici's (2007) philosophical understanding of political myth as a process of work on a common narrative that answers the human need to ground events in significance, it contributes to the study of legitimization in political discourse by examining the role of political myth in official-level U.S. war rhetoric. It explores how two ubiquitous yet largely invisible political myths, American Exceptionalism and Civilization vs. Barbarism, which have long defined America's ideal image of itself and its place in the world, have become staples in the language of the "War on Terror." Through a qualitative analysis of the content of over 50 official texts containing lexical triggers of the two myths, this paper shows that senior officials of the Bush Administration have rhetorically accessed these mythical representations of the world in ways that legitimize and normalize the practices of the "War on Terror." [source] The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: The Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking Within the British Core ExecutivePUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2000Colin Hay In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing litera-ture on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a ,strategic relational' theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments. [source] Public health metaphors in Australian policy on asylum seekersAUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 1 2009Glenda Koutroulis Abstract Objective: To analyse the way in which a public health metaphor has been incorporated into Australian political practice to justify the exclusion or mistreatment of unwelcome non-citizens, giving particular attention to recent asylum seekers. Approach: Starting with a personal experience of working in an immigration detention centre and then drawing on media reports and published scholarship, I critique political rhetoric and policy on asylum seekers, arguing that the significance of a public health metaphor lies in its effectiveness in persuading the public that refugees and asylum seekers are a moral contaminant that threatens the nation and has to be contained. Conclusion: Acceptance of the metaphor sanctions humanly degrading inferences, policies and actions. Public health professionals therefore have a responsibility to challenge the political use of public health and associated metaphors. Implications: Substituting the existing metaphor for one that is more morally acceptable could help to redefine refugees and asylum seekers more positively and promote compassion in political leaders and the community. [source] Cross-constituency Organizing in Canadian UnionsBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2008Linda Briskin This article explores cross-constituency organizing inside three Canadian unions that involves dual, parallel and integrated structures. It assesses these approaches with reference to the conceptual frame of intersectional political practice. In particular, this study highlights the institutionalization of intersectionality through constitutional, organizational and representational intersectionality. The paradigm of autonomy and integration is used to identify effective mechanisms for cross-constituency vehicles. Cross-constituency organizing is a form of coalition-building inside unions It is a vehicle for building solidarities across identities and advancing equity organizing in Canadian unions that supports, at one and the same time, union revitalization and the union equity project. [source] Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in AfricaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2006Christian Lund ABSTRACT Public authority does not always fall within the exclusive realm of government institutions; in some contexts, institutional competition is intense and a range of ostensibly a-political situations become actively politicized. Africa has no shortage of institutions which attempt to exercise public authority: not only are multiple layers and branches of government institutions present and active to various degrees, but so-called traditional institutions bolstered by government recognition also vie for public authority, and new emerging institutions and organizations also enter the field. The practices of these institutions make concepts such as public authority, legitimacy, belonging, citizenship and territory highly relevant. This article proposes an analytical strategy for the understanding of public authority in such contexts. It draws on research from anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and social scientists working on Africa, in an attempt to explore a set of questions related to a variety of political practices and their institutional ramifications. [source] The black flag: Guantánamo Bay and the space of exceptionGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2006Derek Gregory Abstract The American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay has often been described as a lawless space, and many commentators have drawn on the writings of Giorgio Agamben to formalize this description as a ,space of exception'. Agamben's account of the relations between sovereign power, law and violence has much to offer, but it fails to recognize the continued salience of the colonial architectures of power that have been invested in Guantánamo Bay, is insufficiently attentive to the spatialities of international (rather than national) law, and is unduly pessimistic about the politics of resistance. Guantánamo Bay depends on the mobilization of two contradictory legal geographies, one that places the prison outside the United States ito allow the indefinite detention of its captives, and another that places the prison within the United States in order to permit their ,coercive interrogation'. A detailed analysis of these interlocking spatialities , as both legal texts and political practices , is crucial for any crique of the global war prison. The relations between law and violence are more complex and contorted than most accounts allow, and sites like Guantánamo Bay need to be seen not as paradigmatic spaces of political modernity (as Agamben argues) but rather as potential spaces whose realization is an occasion for political struggle not pessimism. [source] Western utopianism/dystopianism and the political mediocrity of critical urban researchGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3-4 2002Guy Baeten This paper seeks to summarise the interplay between utopian and dystopian thinking throughout the twentieth century with a particular focus on the city. The gradually shrinking appeal of the socialist utopia and its replacement with the globalised free,market as a ,revanchist utopia' left socialist utopian thinking in a state of disarray towards the end of the previous century. Utopian thinking, both as a literary and political genre has been rendered marginal in contemporary political practices. Urban dystopia, or ,Stadtschmerz', is now prevalent in critical Western thinking about city and society. It is concluded that the declining political impact of critical urban research is caused partly by its lack of engagement with crafting imaginative alternative futures for the city. The works by Sennett, Sandercock and the Situationists, among others, may contain elements to reverse the current utopian malaise in urban research. [source] The multiplicity of citizenship: transnational and local practices and identifications of middle-class migrantsGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2010MARIANNE VAN BOCHOVE Abstract In this article we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, understood as the sum of all political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle-class immigrants in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. However, although transnational activities in the public sphere are rather exceptional, many immigrants do participate in homeland-directed activities in the private sphere. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle-class immigrants have a strong local identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging to people in their home country. [source] Globalization, Governance, and the Political-Economy of Public Policy Reform in East AsiaGOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2001Mark Beeson In the wake of the crisis that developed in East Asia during 1997, perceptions of the region have been transformed. Critics claim that East Asian political practices and economic structures must be reformed if the region is to prosper in an era of globalization. In short, the region must adopt a different sort of public policy, one associated with an influential agenda of "good governance." This paper critically assesses this discourse and the predominately "Western" assumptions that underpin it. It is argued that, not only is this reformist agenda likely to be resisted by powerful vested interests, but the institutional infrastructure to support such a style of governance is inadequately developed in East Asia. [source] The Republics of Ideas: Venice, Florence and the Defence of Liberty, 1525,1530HISTORY, Issue 279 2000Stephen D. Bowd The sixteenth century has often been regarded as a crucial period in the history of political events in Italy, and in the history of political ideas. The contributions of Florence and Venice to this process have long been acknowledged. Florentine admiration for the Venetian political system reflected internal political instability in the former city. The evidence for Venetian-Florentine contacts, and for a Venetian concern or admiration for Florence has been less noted. This article aims to show that there is evidence that Venetian concern for the defence of republican liberty after 1525 was allied to an awareness of Florentine political events and their significance for Venetian political practices. This awareness was stimulated by the pressure of imperial intervention on the peninsula after 1525. Florence and Venice were allies under the treaty of Cognac, and diplomats in both cities articulated a concern for republican libertas in Italy and an antipathy towards imperial rule. The work of Gasparo Contarini can be placed in this context, and as a result the critical point in the development of his arguments about Venetian political stability can be placed in the 1520s rather than in the years around 1509. The politics and political ideas of both cities were therefore developed in a wider context than has hitherto been supposed. [source] Food consumption and political agency: on concerns and practices among Danish consumersINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 6 2008Bente Halkier Abstract Increasingly ordinary individual consumers are expected to perform some kind of societal or political agency. In the debates about political consumption it is a recurrent topic to what degree consumption practices can be seen as political practices and how many consumers perform such practices. The aim of this article is to empirically qualify the demarcation of the political in individual consumer activities by integrating the concept of political agency in the definition of political consumption. On the basis of empirical results from a representative survey among food consumers in Denmark, the article suggests that by supplementing the criteria of consumers performing specific consumption activities with a criteria of consumers expressing political agency, a more precise empirical delimitation of political consumption can be achieved. Three groups of food consumers are identified: those who perform political consumption practices; those who perform politicized consumption practices; and those who vocalize the discourse of political consumerism. [source] Community psychology, millennium volunteers and UK higher education: a disruptive triptych?,JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Paul S. Duckett Abstract In this paper I critically explore the ideological underpinnings of pedagogical and political practices in UK Higher Education (HE). I first map out the political and pedagogical features of community psychology and then describe the Millennium Volunteers project at the University of Northumbria,a scheme that integrates voluntary placements into undergraduate degree programmes, reflecting on the political and pedagogical premises upon which it is based. I consider the political context and recent social policy trends in UK HE. Through exploring the ideological underbellies of community psychology and Millennium Volunteers I describe the tensions created once both are situated within a HE student's learning and a lecturer's teaching portfolio. I reflect on how each appears to share similar wish lists but conclude that a surface comparison of the pedagogical practices of each can leave unrecognized serious ideological, ethical and political differences that can cause disruption at the interfaces of staff, students and HE institutions. I recommend making the political and ideological assumptions behind pedagogical practices and education policy initiatives more transparent to both students and lecturers alike and outline the reasons for doing so. I conclude by reflecting on implications for the widening access agenda in the present political climate from the standpoint of a community psychologist. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Friends, Strangers or Countrymen?POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2001The Ties between Citizens as Colleagues Some analogies are better than others for understanding the ties and responsibilities between citizens of a state. Citizens are better understood as particular kinds of colleagues than as either strangers or members of close-knit communities such as family or friends. Colleagues are diverse, separate and relatively distant individuals whose involuntary interdependence as equals in a practice or institution creates common concerns; this entails special responsibilities of communication, consideration and trust, which are capable of extension beyond the immediate group. Citizens likewise are involuntarily interdependent in political practices, and have comparable concerns and obligations that are more substantial than liberal advocates of constitutional patriotism recommend. But these are distinct from and potentially more extensible than those between co-nationals sharing a common culture, which are proposed by nationalists and some communitarians. The relationship of citizens is a more valid ground for associative obligations than others apart from family and friends. [source] Towards a feminist geopoliticsTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2001JENNIFER HYNDMAN The intersections and conversations between feminist geography and political geography have been surprisingly few. The notion of a feminist geopolitics remains undeveloped in geography. This paper aims to create a theoretical and practical space in which to articulate a feminist geopolitics. Feminist geopolitics is not an alternative theory of geopolitics, nor the ushering in of a new spatial order, but is an approach to global issues with feminist politics in mind. ,Feminist' in this context refers to analyses and political interventions that address the unequal and often violent relationships among people based on real or perceived differences. Building upon the literature from critical geopolitics, feminist international relations, and transnational feminist studies, I develop a framework for feminist political engagement. The paper interrogates concepts of human security and juxtaposes them with state security, arguing for a more accountable, embodied, and responsive notion of geopolitics. A feminist geopolitics is sought by examining politics at scales other than that of the nation-state; by challenging the public/private divide at a global scale; and by analyzing the politics of mobility for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. As such, feminist geopolitics is a critical approach and a contingent set of political practices operating at scales finer and coarser than the nation-state. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||