Showing papers on "Ideology published in 2004"

What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy

Abstract: Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs. It offers analyses of a 2-year study of educational programs in the United States that aimed to promote democracy. Drawing on democratic theory and on findings from their study, the authors detail three conceptions of the “good” citizen—personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented—that underscore political implications of education for democracy. The article demonstrates that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.

The legitimacy of social enterprise

Abstract: Social enterprise has emerged as a businesslike contrast to the traditional nonprofit organization This article develops an explanatory direction for social enterprise based on institutional perspectives rather than more traditional rational economic concepts Through Suchman's typology of legitimacy (1995), the article argues that the origin and evolution of social enterprise is put into dramatically different focus, particularly through the concept of moral legitimacy Moral legitimacy not only connects the overall emergence of social enterprise with neoconservative, pro-business, and promarket political and ideological values that have become central in many nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development but also explains the observation that social enterprise is being more frequently understood and practiced in more narrow commercial and revenue-generation terms

Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and Ideology

Abstract: This article focuses on consumer movements that seek ideological and cultural change. Building from a basis in New Social Movement (NSM) theory, we study these movements among anti‐advertising, anti‐Nike, and anti‐GE food activists. We find activists’ collective identity linked to an evangelical identity related to U.S. activism’s religious roots. Our findings elucidate the value of spiritual and religious identities to gaining commitment, warn of the perils of preaching to the unconverted, and highlight movements that seek to transform the ideology and culture of consumerism. Conceiving mainstream consumers as ideological opponents inverts conventional NSM theories that view them as activists’ clients.

Creating Difference: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform

Abstract: This article raises questions about current educational reform efforts now underway in a number of nations. Research from a number of countries is used to document some of the hidden differential effects of two connected strategies—neo-liberal inspired market proposals and neo-liberal, neo-conservative, and middle class managerial inspired regulatory proposals, including national curricula and national testing. This article describes how different interests with different educational and social visions compete for dominion in the social field of power surrounding educational policy and practice. In the process, it documents some of the complexities and imbalances in this fiel do f power. These complexities and imbalances result in “thin” rather than “thick” morality and tend toward the reproduction of both dominant pedagogical and curricular forms and ideologies and the social privileges that accompany them.

Beyond the Third World: imperial globality, global coloniality and anti-globalisation social movements

Abstract: The increasing realisation that there are modern problems for which there are no modern solutions points towards the need to move beyond the paradigm of modernity and, hence, beyond the Third World. Imagining after the Third World takes place against the backdrop of two major processes: first, the rise of a new US-based form of imperial globality, an economic–military– ideological order that subordinates regions, peoples and economies world-wide. Imperial globality has its underside in what could be called, following a group of Latin American researchers, global coloniality, meaning by this the heightened marginalisation and suppression of the knowledge and culture of subaltern groups. The second social process is the emergence of self-organising social movement networks, which operate under a new logic, fostering forms of counter-hegemonic globalisation. It is argued that, to the extent that they engage with the politics of difference, particularly through place-based yet transnationalised political stra...

Why Europe needs a constitution

Abstract: Larry Siedentop's book Democracy in Europe expresses a more cautious mood: as he puts it, 'a great constitutional debate need not involve a prior commitment to federalism as the most desirable outcome in Europe. This chapter begins with a question: why should we pursue the project of an 'ever-closer Union' any further at all? The rational expectation of mutual benefits within Europe and of differential competitive advantages on world markets could, to date, provide a legitimation 'through outcomes' for an ever-closer Union. The political tradition of the workers' movement, the salience of Christian social doctrines and even a certain normative core of social liberalism still provide a formative background for social solidarity. Modern Europe has institutionalized a comprehensive spectrum of competing conservative, liberal and socialist interpretations of capitalist modernization, in an ideological system of political parties. Economic globalization, shares with all processes of accelerated modernization some disquieting features.

The Terror of Neoliberalism

Abstract: This book argues that neoliberalism is not simply an economic theory but also a set of values, ideologies, and practices that works more like a cultural field that is not only refiguring political and economic power, but eliminating the very categories of the social and political as essential elements of democratic life. Neoliberalism has become the most dangerous ideology of our time. Collapsing the link between corporate power and the state, neoliberalism is putting into place the conditions for a new kind of authoritarianism in which large sections of the population are increasingly denied the symbolic and economic capital necessary for engaged citizenship. Moreover, as corporate power gains a stranglehold on the media, the educational conditions necessary for a democracy are undermined as politics is reduced to a spectacle, essentially both depoliticizing politics and privatizing culture. This series addresses the relationship among culture, power, politics, and democratic struggles. Focusing on how culture offers opportunities that may expand and deepen the prospects for an inclusive democracy, it draws from struggles over the media, youth, political economy, workers, race, feminism, and more, highlighting how each offers a site of both resistance and transformation.

Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics

Abstract: In the summer of 1991, population geneticists and evolutionary biologists proposed to archive human genetic diversity by collecting the genomes of "isolated indigenous populations." Their initiative, which became known as the Human Genome Diversity Project, generated early enthusiasm from those who believed it would enable huge advances in our understanding of human evolution. However, vocal criticism soon emerged. Physical anthropologists accused Project organizers of reimporting racist categories into science. Indigenous-rights leaders saw a "Vampire Project" that sought the blood of indigenous people but not their well-being. More than a decade later, the effort is barely off the ground. How did an initiative whose leaders included some of biology's most respected, socially conscious scientists become so stigmatized? How did these model citizen-scientists come to be viewed as potential racists, even vampires? This book argues that the long abeyance of the Diversity Project points to larger, fundamental questions about how to understand knowledge, democracy, and racism in an age when expert claims about genomes increasingly shape the possibilities for being human. Jenny Reardon demonstrates that far from being innocent tools for fighting racism, scientific ideas and practices embed consequential social and political decisions about who can define race, racism, and democracy, and for what ends. She calls for the adoption of novel conceptual tools that do not oppose science and power, truth and racist ideologies, but rather draw into focus their mutual constitution.

Social identity theory and party identification

Abstract: Objective. Given that the group aspect of party identification forms a central, yet largely unexplored element of American partisanship, social identity theory presents a compelling social-psychological theory of group belonging through which to reinterpret the contemporary understanding of partisanship. Methods. Using a mail survey of 302 randomly selected Franklin County, Ohio residents, levels of social identification with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and political independents are measured using the Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale. Scores on the IDPG are used to predict attitudes toward parties and the consistency of partisan behavior. Results. Levels of partisan social identity proved to be significant predictors of political party ratings, ideology, and party activities, even when taking traditional measures of partisan strength into account. Conclusions. Social identity is a fundamental aspect of partisanship, which, when measured, can lead to superior prediction and understanding of related political attitudes and behaviors.

Ideology and utopia

Abstract: Although Karl Mannheim and Ernst Bloch provide two contrasting analyses of the relationship between ideology and utopia, they hold in common the belief that the two concepts need to be examined together as a pair of closely related concepts. Mannheim argues that the ideological and the utopian are both forms of ‘reality‐transcendence’, and constructs an historical account of their role in the emergence of modernity. Bloch posits a ‘utopian surplus’ in ideology which carries the ‘not‐yet’ of human potential. The recent ‘post‐secular’ turn in contemporary political philosophy provides an excellent focus for considering the utility of the two approaches, and a discussion of the relationship of the two thinkers to the work of Karl Marx can help clarify the nature of their differences.

Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt

Abstract: How do people come to think of themselves as part of a nation? "Dramas of Nationhood" identifies a fantastic cultural form that binds together the Egyptian nation-television serials. These melodramatic programs-like soap operas but more closely tied to political and social issues than their Western counterparts-have been shown on television in Egypt for more than thirty years. In this book, Lila Abu-Lughod examines the shifting politics of these serials and the way their contents both reflect and seek to direct the changing course of Islam, gender relations, and everyday life in this Middle Eastern nation. Representing a decade's worth of research, "Dramas of Nationhood" makes a case for the importance of studying television to answer larger questions about culture, power, and modern self-fashionings. Abu-Lughod explores the elements of developmentalist ideology and the visions of national progress that once dominated Egyptian television-now experiencing a crisis. She discusses the broadcasts in rich detail, from the generic emotional qualities of TV serials and the depictions of authentic national culture, to the debates inflamed by their deliberate strategies for combating religious extremism.

Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Neo-Liberalism: Making the Political More Pedagogical:

Abstract: Neo-liberalism has reached a new stage in the United States, buttressed largely by the almost seamless alliances formed among the Bush administration, religious fundamentalists, neo-conservative extremists, the dominant media, and corporate elites. This article explores the various ways in which neo-liberal cultural politics works as a form of public pedagogy to devalue the meaning of the social contract, education, and citizenship by defining higher education primarily as a financial investment and learning as a form of training for the workforce. Aggressively fostering its attack on the welfare state, unions, non-commodified public spheres, and any critical vestige of critical education, neo-liberal politics makes it increasingly more difficult to address the necessity of a political education in which active and critical political agents have to be formed, educated, and socialized into the world of politics. This article explores how the intersection of cultural studies and public pedagogy offers a cha...

Against the current—stemming the tide: the nostalgic ideology of the contemporary radical populist right

Abstract: Since the 1980s, a growing number of radical right‐wing populist parties have managed to establish themselves permanently in the party systems of advanced liberal capitalist democracies. Initially dismissed as ephemeral reflections of a general debasement of politics in recent years, they represent today one of the most serious challenges to liberal democracy in Western Europe and elsewhere. Unlike the traditional postwar radical right, the contemporary populist right has developed an ideology that, albeit fundamentally anti‐liberal, is compatible with the basic formal principles of democracy. Radical right‐wing populist ideology is anti‐elitist, appealing instead to the common sense of ordinary people; exclusionary, appealing to the right to cultural diversity and identity; and openly discriminatory, appealing to the right to ‘national preference’. The larger goal behind the radical right‐wing populist political project is to halt and reverse the erosion of the established patterns of ethnic political an...

The Role of Normative Political Ideology in Consumer Behavior

Abstract: This study of African-American consumers living in a large racially segregated midwestern city adds to extant theory on ideology in consumer behavior by considering the role of normative political ideology in provisioning. The specific roles of traditional black liberal and black nationalist political ideologies are discussed. We conclude that normative political ideology is central to understanding shopping as an expression of social and political relations between households confronting attenuated access to goods and services, ranging from housing to food, in a setting stratified by gender, race, and class. Beyond the specifics of this demographic group and setting, we suggest that contemporary consumption in the United States is a primary arena in which political ideology is expressed and constructed.

Accounting for God: accounting and accountability practices in the Society of Jesus (Italy, XVI-XVII centuries)

Abstract: It is argued in this paper that the development of accounting and accountability practices within the Society of Jesus from the 16th to the 17th centuries cannot be reduced to an economic explanation that views them merely as tools for measuring and allocating economic resources thereby explaining the formation of hierarchies. Rather, their development and refinement were tightly linked to the absolutist ideology of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Counter-Reformation, conceived of here as a complex work of compromise among theological, religious, political, institutional, and social instances, of which the hierarchical structure of the Order and its accounting records were only the visible traces.

Consumption and its discontents: addiction, identity and the problems of freedom

Abstract: The focus of this paper is on the notion of 'addictive consumption', conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are consistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shifting configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance. Finally, it suggests that the notion of 'addiction' has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its proliferation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself.

Paternal Involvement with Children: The Influence of Gender Ideologies

Abstract: Although prior social science research has established the ability of gender ideologies to influence the domestic division of labor, it has neglected to disentangle their potentially unique influence on paternal involvement with children. Past research examining the influence of gender ideology on parenting behaviors does not acknowledge potential differences that may result from accounting for each parent's gender ideology. Using both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 1,088), I assess the effect of both mother's and father's gender ideology on two measures of paternal involvement. Whereas egalitarian fathers demonstrate greater involvement than traditional fathers, mother's gender ideology failed to predict paternal involvement. Egalitarian mothers do not appear to negotiate greater father involvement successfully.

Populism for political theorists

Abstract: Political theorists do not in general pay much attention to populism; are there any good reasons why they should do so? This paper will consider a number of positive answers to this question Most attention has so far been paid to issues of methodology—can we define ‘populism’? Recently there has also been some interest in the relation between populism and democracy, but there are two further topics that may be worth investigating, first the possibility of a distinctive political ideology that might be called ‘populist’, and second the meanings and significance of populism's core concept, the elusive ‘people’

An End to Ideology

Abstract: A trilogy of ideologies is haunting the modern world-the trilogy of Marxist socialism, unencumbered individualism, and fascist religiosity. Should all the social scientific powers of old and new Europe as well as those of the Americas and their progeny enter into an alliance to hunt down and exorcise this trilogy? Perhaps it is high time that Q methodologists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet these nursery tales with a manifesto of their own. To this end, the collected works of William Stephenson and Steven Brown and those of the growing number of Q researchers, present and afoot, might be assembled and published in the major languages of the world. Now that would be a class struggle.

Communicating Professional Identity in Medical Socialization: Considering the Ideological Discourse of Morning Report

Abstract: In this study, the authors investigate how medical ideology and physician professional identity are socially constructed during morning report, a formal teaching conference considered to be a cornerstone of medical education. Analysis of transcripts from 20 meetings reveals physician identity is developed through ideological discourse that produces and reproduces systems of domination that privilege scientific medicine and marginalize humanistic approaches. Findings indicate how, in a socialization context uniquely focused on discourse, communication functions to construct a professional identity grounded in the principles of the biomedical model. Although medical residents deviate from traditional ideology by articulating the voice of the lifeworld, faculty physicians counter these moves by asserting the voice of medicine. The authors draw conclusions regarding identity formation and the socialization practices of medical education.

''I Did Not Get that Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of Color-Blind Racism

Abstract: In this paper we discuss the dominant racial stories that accompany color-blind racism, the dominant post–civil rights racial ideology, and asses their ideological role. Using interview data from the 1997 Survey of College Students Social Attitudes and the 1998 Detroit Area Study, we document the prevalence of four story lines and two types of testimonies among whites. We also provide data on ideological dissidence among some whites (we label them racial progressives) and blacks. We show that although these stories, and the racial ideology they reinforce, have become dominant, neither goes uncontested.

The House of IR: From Family Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism

Abstract: Poisies offers an alternative epistemology to understand, critique, engage with, and reconstruct international relations (IR). Generally, this Greek concept refers to “creativity” or “poetic inspiration.” We enlarge this definition by returning to poisies ' original, ancient meaning: that is, creativity that comes from an act of reverberation or putting “language in a state of emergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity” (Bachelard 1964:xxiii). In seizing upon the specific reality of world politics as a trans-subjective mode of imagining, poisies pushes us to recognize that becoming and being have countless forms, various voices, and changing scripts. Consequently, we move beyond an instrumental, formalistic, fixed, and narrow scientific logic that imposes a historical parochialism (e.g., Hobbes's State of Nature) for an ahistorical universal (e.g., “it's a war of all against all across time and space”). We begin to see IR in a new light. Its “vivacity” is manifested through IR's political and ideological participation in world politics, accounting for the field's social relations and structural interests. This explains why conventional IR appeals to some the way it does while affecting so many others so negatively. International relation's singularity also becomes apparent: that is, it is but one of many versions and understandings of world politics. Specifically, IR comes to resemble a colonial household. Its singular, oppositional perspective (“I versus You”) stakes out an establishment of “civilization” in a space that is already crowded with local traditions of thinking, doing, and being but proclaimed, in willful arrogance, as a “state of nature” plagued by fearful “anarchy” and its murderous power politics. The House seeks to stave off such “disorder” by imposing “order.” But the House does so by appropriating the knowledge, resources, and labor of racialized, sexualized Others for its own benefit and pleasure while announcing itself the sole producer—the …

Social or Economic Goals, Civic Inclusion or Exclusion? An Analysis of Rural Development Theory and Practice

Abstract: Based on research conducted in Northern Ireland, this article examines two aspects of rural development practice. Firstly, it examines the emphasis given to social and civic development alongside economic development. Secondly, the idea that partnerships represent increased democracy and civic participation is explored. The theoretical framework is informed by the social capital debate, with particular reference to the work of Robert Putnam. It is argued that the social capital debate clarifies the importance of economic goals vis-a-vis social and civic goals. It is further argued that the social capital debate gives renewed impetus to a romantic naive view of rural communities, where civic harmony and inclusion triumphs and there is little room for power struggles, exclusionary tactics by privileged groups, or ideological conflicts. This research corroborates that the rural development process is mired by difficulties because of unrealistic expectations, inadequate specification of goals, and a lack of central government responsibility for the process. It is suggested that the problems posed by area-based development do not represent questions for local partnerships to address, but rather ones that must be taken up by national governments.

Culture in the Age of Three Worlds

Abstract: Over the last half of the twentieth century, culture moved to the foreground of political and intellectual life. Suddenly everyone discovered that culture had been mass produced like Ford's cars; the masses had culture and culture had mass. Culture was everywhere, no longer the property of the cultured or the cultivated. Radical social movements around the globe invented a politics of culture. Culture in the Age of Three Worlds is a reflection on this cultural turn, which was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds, that short half-century between 1945 and 1989 when it was imagined that the world was divided into three--the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the decolonizing third world. Recasting the legacies of British cultural studies and the radical traditions of the American studies movement in a global context, Michael Denning explores the political and intellectual battles over the meanings of culture, addresses the rise of a distinctive "American ideology", and charts the lineaments of the global cultures that emerged as three worlds gave way to one.

Empire's New Clothes : Reading Hardt and Negri

Abstract: Introduction: Postmodern Republicanism Paul A. Passavant Immanence 1. Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Transcendence 2. The Immanence of Empire Peter Fitzpatrick Market 3. On Divine Markets and the Problem of Justice Bill Maurer Law 4. Legal Imperialism: Empire's Invisible Hand? Ruth Buchanan and Sundhya Pahuja Representation 5. From Empire's Law to the Multitude's Rights: Law, Representation, Revolution Paul A. Passavant Sovereignty 6. Representing the International: Sovereignty after Modernity? Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes Global 7. Africa's Ambiguous Relation to Empire and Empire Kevin C. Dunn Intermezzo: The Theory & Event Interview Sovereignty, Multitudes, Absolute Democracy A Discussion between Michael Hardt and Thomas Dumm Space 8. The Repositioning of Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics Saskia Sassen Place 9. The Irrepressible Lightness of Joy and of Being Green: Empire and Environmentalism William Chaloupka Migration 10. Smooth Politics Malcolm Bull Generation 11. Taking the Millennialist Pulse of Empire's Multitude: A Genealogical Feminist Analysis Lee Quinby Capitalism 12. The Ideology of Empire and Its Traps Slavoj Zizek Communication 13. The Networked Empire: Communicative Capitalism and the Hope for Politics Jodi Dean Revolution 14. The Myth of the Multitude Kam Shapiro Event 15. Representation and the Event Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean Contributors

Negotiating Spaces For/Through Third-Wave Feminism

Abstract: This essay examines the challenge confronting young feminists of finding their place and creating their space in the political landscape. It argues that the conceptual leverage of a "third wave" helps young women articulate a feminism that responds to the political, economic, technological, and cultural circumstances that are unique to the current era. Rather than take the position that the existence or authenticity of third-wave feminism ought be argued, the author asks the more important questions of what are the unique contributions that third-wave rhetoric can make? What is it about the political climate that has given rise to third wave that enables these feminists to make different contributions than second-wave feminists might make? Continuing to articulate feminism as a force to be reckoned with has become increasingly complex in our pluralistic world. It is further complicated by a now sophisticated and prolific postfeminist ideology that has co-opted and depoliticized the central tenets of feminism. The only thing postfeminism has to do with authentic feminism, however, is to contradict it at every turn while disguising this agenda, to perpetuate the falsehood that the need for feminist change is outdated. The author also discusses the rhetorical challenges facing third-wave feminists. She argues that their virtues of pluralism and contradiction could become their vices if they retreat from making arguments about what constitutes feminism, and that third-wave contributions can be made more profound if they refuse to see second wave monolithically. Finally, the author argues that third-wave feminists must meet these rhetorical challenges if they are to avoid the dangerous possibilities of false feminism: personal journey and resistance that are devoid of politics, and weak feminism: working for only as much social change as a patriarchal social order can outrun.

What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?

Abstract: Public opinion influences politicians, and therefore influences public policy decisions. What are the roles of self-interest, knowledge, and ideology in public opinion formation? And how do people learn about economic issues? Using a new, specially-designed survey, we find that most respondents express a strong desire to be well informed on economic policy issues, and that television is their dominant source of information. On a variety of major policy issues (e.g., taxes, social security, health insurance), ideology is the most important determinant of public opinion, while measures of self-interest are the least important. Knowledge about the economy ranks somewhere in between.