Showing papers on "Ideology published in 2008"

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

Abstract: The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality This revised and expanded edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era One presents the Great Recession as a “stress test” of the American political system by analyzing the 2008 election and the impact of Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” on the economic fortunes of the rich, middle class, and poor The other assesses the politics of inequality in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2012 election, and the partisan gridlock of Obama’s second term Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation President Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time” Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read

The thin ideology of populism

Abstract: The concept of populism has in recent years inspired much debate and much confusion. It has been described variously as a pathology, a style, a syndrome and a doctrine. Others have raised doubts as to whether the term has any analytical utility, concluding that it is simply too vague to tell us anything meaningful about politics. Drawing on recent developments in the theoretical literature, it is argued that populism should be regarded as a ‘thin’ ideology which, although of limited analytical use on its own terms, nevertheless conveys a distinct set of ideas about the political which interact with the established ideational traditions of full ideologies.

Ideology: Its Resurgence in Social, Personality, and Political Psychology:

Abstract: We trace the rise, fall, and resurgence of political ideology as a topic of research in social, personality, and political psychology. For over 200 years, political belief systems have been classified usefully according to a single left-right (or liberal-conservative) dimension that, we believe, possesses two core aspects: (a) advocating versus resisting social change and (b) rejecting versus accepting inequality. There have been many skeptics of the notion that most people are ideologically inclined, but recent psychological evidence suggests that left-right differences are pronounced in many life domains. Implicit as well as explicit preferences for tradition, conformity, order, stability, traditional values, and hierarchy-versus those for progress, rebelliousness, chaos, flexibility, feminism, and equality-are associated with conservatism and liberalism, respectively. Conservatives score consistently higher than liberals on measures of system justification. Furthermore, there are personality and lifestyle differences between liberals and conservatives as well as situational variables that induce either liberal or conservative shifts in political opinions. Our thesis is that ideological belief systems may be structured according to a left-right dimension for largely psychological reasons linked to variability in the needs to reduce uncertainty and threat.

Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times

Abstract: My aim in this paper is to think through a number of issues concerning the relationship between culture and subjectivity. It seems to me that exploring the relationship of changing forms of political organization, social relations and cultural practices to changing modes and experiences of subjecthood and subjectivity are among the most important and urgent tasks for critical intellectual work. These questions go to the heart of understanding power, ideology and agency, and they require research that is interdisciplinary, psychosocial and intersectional. My particular focus in this short article is on the interrelations between changing representational practices in visual culture and changing subjectivity/ies. I argue that neoliberalism and postfeminism are central to understanding contemporary media culture, and I put the case for research that does not retreat from exploring how these broader social/political/economic/cultural discourses and formations may relate to subjectivity.

What is neo-liberalism?

Abstract: Neo-liberalism is an oft-invoked but ill-defined concept in the social sciences. This article conceptualizes neo-liberalism as a sui generis ideological system born of struggle and collaboration in three worlds: intellectual, bureaucratic and political. Emphasizing neo-liberalism’s third ‘face’, it argues that a failure to grasp neo-liberalism as a political form imposes two limitations on understanding its effects: (i) fostering an implicit assumption that European political elites are ‘naturally’ opposed to the implementation of neo-liberal policies; and (ii) tending to preempt inquiry into an unsettling fact—namely, that the most effective advocates of policies understood as neo-liberal in Western Europe (and beyond) have often been elites who are sympathetic to, or are representatives of, the left and centre-left. Given that social democratic politics were uniquely powerful in Western Europe for much of the post-war period, neo-liberalism within the mainstream parties of the European left deserves particular attention.

The citizen-consumer hybrid: ideological tensions and the case of Whole Foods Market

Abstract: Ethical consumer discourse is organized around the idea that shopping, and particularly food shopping, is a way to create progressive social change. A key component of this discourse is the “citizen-consumer” hybrid, found in both activist and academic writing on ethical consumption. The hybrid concept implies a social practice – “voting with your dollar” – that can satisfy competing ideologies of consumerism (an idea rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collective responsibility to a social and ecological commons). While a hopeful sign, this hybrid concept needs to be theoretically unpacked, and empirically explored. This article has two purposes. First, it is a theory-building project that unpacks the citizen-consumer concept, and investigates underlying ideological tensions and contradictions. The second purpose of the paper is to relate theory to an empirical case-study of the citizen-consumer in practice. Using the case-study of Whole Foods Market (WFM), a corporation frequently touted as an ethical market actor, I ask: (1) how does WFM frame the citizen-consumer hybrid, and (2) what ideological tensions between consumer and citizen ideals are present in the framing? Are both ideals coexisting and balanced in the citizen-consumer hybrid, or is this construct used to disguise underlying ideological inconsistencies? Rather than meeting the requirements of consumerism and citizenship equally, the case of WFM suggests that the citizen-consumer hybrid provides superficial attention to citizenship goals in order to serve three consumerist interests better: consumer choice, status distinction, and ecological cornucopianism. I argue that a true “citizen-consumer” hybrid is not only difficult to achieve, but may be internally inconsistent in a growth-oriented corporate setting.

On Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract: Critical discourse analysis(CDA) aims at making transparent the connections between language,power and ideology in natural speech situations from the angle of linguistics,sociology and psychology,and also studies how these factors influence each other.The main theoretical origin of CDA is Western Marxism and it employs Halliday's systemic functional analysis as the analytical tool.

The language of social entrepreneurs

Abstract: This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of ent...

The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending

Abstract: In the summer of 1943 Americans were marching victoriously through Sicily and making their way up the Italian peninsula to fight Fascist and Nazi troops, and eventually defeat them. They had planned to complement the military action with action in the field of education and to that purpose educator Carleton Washburne – at the time an officer and soon in charge of such task – gathered as much information as possible about the Fascist school system, on the one hand, and endeavoured to change it by infusing it with democratic values supported by a progressive education perspective, and by revising school textbooks and contents, on the other (Washburne, 1970; Fornaca, 1982). The overall aim was not to overturn the school system that they had found, but – as a report issued by the Allies stated – to change it step by step since both the system and ‘the human material ... cannot be transported suddenly and without shocks into the new one by way of a magic wand’ (Fornaca, 1982, p. 40). Italians who were fighting in the Resistance against Nazis and Fascists had also engaged in reforming the Fascist educational ideology and structure as soon as they liberated a town or a valley, but for various reasons they could maintain control over their military and civil successes in a limited way (Fornaca, 1982, p. 40). With regard to the educational changes under way and promoted by the Allied troops, it was the Catholic Church that proved to be the interlocutor whose disagreement over choice of educational advisors or decisions about religious instruction had to be reckoned with and appeased (Washburne, 1970; Fornaca, 1982). In the end, with Washburne’s supervision, a group of Italian educators prepared the 1945-46 primary school curricula. Much of the new educational model was rooted in the American and British traditions that many Italian educators judged more amenable than others to life in republican Italy, though Dewey and his educational thought and pedagogy never gained unquestioned consensus and popularity in post-war Italy. The lessons Washburne brought from elsewhere to be disseminated into a new sociocultural and political territory were filtered through the sieve of different, and competing, local educational traditions and eventually re-elaborated into a culturespecific perspective on schooling and education that owed much to the newly established Italian political balance.

The Sensitive Left and the Impervious Right: Multilevel Models and the Politics of Inequality, Ideology, and Legitimacy in Europe

Abstract: Recent years have seen increased attention to integrating what we know about individual citizens with what we know about macro-level contexts that vary across countries This article discusses the growing literature on how people's interpretations, opinions, and actions are shaped by variable contextual parameters and provides a novel substantive application Using surveys conducted in 20 European democracies, the authors examine the effect of income inequality on people's attitudes about the functioning of the political system and trust in public institutions They find that citizens in countries with higher levels of income inequality express more negative attitudes toward public institutions Moreover, they show that the negative effect of inequality on attitudes toward the political system is particularly powerful among individuals on the political left In contrast, inequality's negative effect on people's faith in the system is muted among those on the right

Technology/Ideology: How Ideological Fields Influence Consumers’ Technology Narratives

Abstract: Through a systematic study of consumer narratives, this article models how technology ideologies influence consumer-level thought, speech, and action. Applying critical discourse analysis and articulation theory approaches, a semiotic square model represents the relations between Techtopian, Green Luddite, Work Machine, and Techspressive ideological elements in an ideological field. The narratives of individual consumers move between ideological elements in ways suggested by the model's semantic relations. The results reveal novel aspects of consumers' dynamic relations to technology ideology and invite further investigations of technology and consumption ideology.

Caring Fathers: The Ideology of Gender Equality and Masculine Positions

Abstract: In this article, we explore Swedish men's relations to fatherhood in general and in particular to the new ideal of the caring and present father. We argue that the image of contemporary hegemonic masculinity is gradually changing. Reforms and informational strategies are used to enhance and create the "new father." In this article, we explore and analyze how four different groups of Swedish men-Christian men, psychotherapists, a male network, and immigrant men-relate to and discuss issues concerning new gender ideals, the modern father, and fathers as important caretakers. These issues are explored through four focus group interviews. The results from the study point toward the influences of factors such as age, social background, and religion. We also see that the ideology of gender equality has a strong general influence on men's ways of relating to and phrasing these issues. © 2008 Sage Publications.

Foreigners' Impact on European Societies Public Views and Perceptions in a Cross-National Comparative Perspective

Abstract: The research examines the extent to which attitudes toward foreigners vary across European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey for 21 countries the analysis reveals that foreigners' impact on society is viewed in most countries in negative rather in positive terms. The negative views are most pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on crime and least pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on culture. Multi-level regression analysis demonstrates that the negative views tend to be more pronounced among individuals who are socially and economically vulnerable and among individuals who hold conservative political ideologies. The analysis also reveals that negative attitudes toward foreigners tend to be more pronounced in countries characterized by large proportions of foreigners, where economic conditions are less prosperous, and where support for right-wing political parties is more prevalent. The analysis shows that inflated perception of the size of the foreign population is li...

Mining for justice in the food system: perceptions, practices, and possibilities

Abstract: Despite much popular interest in food issues, there remains a lack of social justice in the American agrifood system, as evidenced by prevalent hunger and obesity in low-income populations and exploitation of farmworkers. While many consumers and alternative agrifood organizations express interest in and support social justice goals, the incorporation of these goals into on-the-ground alternatives is often tenuous. Academics have an important role in calling out social justice issues and developing the critical thinking skills that can redress inequality in the agrifood system. Academics can challenge ideological categories of inquiry and problem definition, include justice factors in defining research problems, and develop participatory, problem-solving research within social justice movements. In addition, scholars can educate students about the power of epistemologies, discourse, and ideology, thereby expanding the limits and boundaries of what is possible in transforming the agrifood system. In these ways, the academy can be a key player in the creation of a diverse agrifood movement that embraces the discourse of social justice.

Achievement as Resistance: The Development of a Critical Race Achievement Ideology among Black Achievers

Abstract: In this article, Dorinda Carter examines the embodiment of a critical race achievement ideology in high-achieving black students. She conducted a yearlong qualitative investigation of the adaptive ...

The Anthropology of Christianity

Abstract: This article surveys the literature that constitutes the newly emergent anthropology of Christianity. Arguing that the development of this sub-discipline was impeded until recently by anthropology's theoretical framing and empirical interests, this article explains that demographic and world-historical forces have made it such that anthropology has had to recently come to terms with Christianity as an ethnographic object. In doing so, anthropology also has had to address its problematic relationship with Christianity, either in the religion's direct effect on the formation of the discipline, or as reflected by Christianity's influence on modernity itself, which has been vital for anthropology as both a category and as a style of cognition. In addition to these meta-theoretical questions, the anthropology of Christianity has become a space in which anthropology has been able to re-examine issues of social and cultural continuity and discontinuity in light of conversion to Christianity. Specifically, the issue of social change (often thought through or against the issue of ‘modernity’) has involved specific ethnographic examinations of fields, such as the relation between linguistic ideology and language use, economic practice, changing formations of gender and race, and the modes through which the person is culturally structured, and how that category of the person stands in relation to the social. Rather than presenting an overarching theoretical narrative, however, this review notes that these issues play out in divergent ways in differently situated communities, especially where Christianity's individuating effect may be muted where is it functions as an anti- or counter-modern force; this dynamic and contingent nature of Christianity underscores that Christianity itself is a heterogeneous object, and thus promises to be an area of rich empirical research and theoretical focus that should be beneficial not only for this sub-discipline, but also for the field of anthropology as a whole.

On Positive Psychological Outcomes: What Helps Groups With a History of Conflict to Forgive and Reconcile With Each Other?

Abstract: Three studies examined the roles of traditional and novel social psychological variables involved in intergroup forgiveness. Study 1 (N = 480) revealed that among the pro-Pinochet and the anti-Pinochet groups in Chile, forgiveness was predicted by ingroup identity (negatively), common ingroup identity (positively), empathy and trust (positively), and competitive victimhood (the subjective sense of having suffered more than the outgroup, negatively). Political ideology (Right vs. Left) moderated the relationship between empathy and forgiveness, trust and forgiveness, and between the latter and competitive victimhood. Study 2 (N = 309), set in the Northern Irish conflict between Protestants and Catholics, provided a replication and extension of Study 1. Finally, Study 3 (N = 155/108) examined the longitudinal relationship between forgiveness and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, revealing that forgiveness predicted reconciliation intentions. The reverse direction of this relationship was also marginally significant. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.

Turning round the telescope: centre-right parties and immigration and integration policy in Europe

Abstract: Because those who study migration do not focus much on parties, while those who study parties tend to focus on migration only insofar as it affects electoral competition and positioning, the role of political parties in immigration control and integration policy is underestimated. Parties on the centre-right, which have enjoyed nowhere near the attention devoted to their more radical counterparts, are particularly important and interesting in this respect. They make up many European governments and therefore help to determine state and EU policy. Maintaining their ownership of the issues involved makes electoral sense but their policies on control and integration are not purely, or at least primarily, a strategic response to the populist radical right; even before the rise of the latter, immigration and integration were matters of genuine ideological and practical concern for Europe's market liberal, conservative and Christian Democratic parties. Too hard a line, however, risks alienating their supporters...

Tourism: A Critical Business:

Abstract: A research and practice gap is identified demonstrating tourism to be an insufficiently critical business. Initially the idea of critical tourism is addressed in two ways. First, an array of meanings is exposed from which the idea of critical theory is developed. Next, discussion turns to how critical approaches can contribute to good management and governance of tourism by providing understandings that technical rationality can overlook. Finally, the limited extent of critical tourism research is established. The article concludes that tourism should be a critical business and offers pointers for such an agenda. For although positivist research informed by technical rationality is crucial to the better operational management of tourism, critical research is essential for setting an agenda for ethical management, governance and coexistence with the wider world. Indeed it is critical to deep, long-term sustainability and even the survival of tourism.

Transnational Agrarian Movements: Origins and Politics, Campaigns and Impact

Abstract: This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Agrarian Change on transnational agrarian movements (TAMs). The contributors’ methods and subjects vary widely in geographical, temporal and political scope. The contributors to this collection share an understanding of TAMs’ complexity that grows out of an appreciation of the complicated historical origins and the delicate political balancing acts that necessarily characterize any effort to construct cross-border alliances linking highly heterogeneous organizations, social classes, ethnicities, political viewpoints and regions. This introductory essay outlines the TAMs’ deep historical roots and also explains why and how the authors in this collection see this complexity as an essential element in understanding TAMs. This complexity can be understood by looking at seven common themes: (i) representation and agendas, (ii) political strategies and forms of actions, (iii) impact, (iv) TAMs as arenas of action between different (sub)national movements, (v) class origins, (vi) ideological and political differences and (vii) the dynamics of alliance-building. By acknowledging TAMs’ contradictions, ambiguities and internal tensions, the authors also seek, from the standpoint of engaged intellectuals, to advance a transformative political project by better comprehending its origins, past successes and failures, and current and future challenges.

A ‘tragic actor’? A realist perspective on ‘ethical power Europe’

Abstract: A broad consensus has emerged among its member states that the EU plays a distinc tive role in international politics, eschewing traditional power politics and acting as a 'force for good' in the world. This discursive move to provide the EU's foreign and security policies with ideological and political legitimacy has been favourably received in much of the academic world where concepts such as 'civilian' or, more recently, 'normative' power have been widely applied to the EU's emerging inter national role. This article critically examines the notion of 'ethical power Europe', drawing on realist international theory and the political philosophy of Michael Oakeshott.

Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone)

Abstract: There is a deep well of rage inside of me. Rage about how I as an individual have been treated in philosophy; rage about how others I know have been treated; and rage about the conditions that I’m sure affect many women and minorities in philosophy, and have caused many others to leave. Most of the time I suppress this rage and keep it sealed away. Until I came to MIT in 1998, I was in a constant dialogue with myself about whether to quit philosophy, even give up tenure, to do something else. In spite of my deep love for philosophy, it just didn’t seem worth it. And I am one of the very lucky ones, one of the ones who has been successful by the dominant standards of the profession. Whatever the numbers say about women and minorities in philosophy, numbers don’t begin to tell the story. Things may be getting better in some contexts, but they are far from acceptable.

Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia

Abstract: This book explores the relationship between gender, religion and political action in Indonesia, examining the patterns of gender orders that have prevailed in recent history, and demonstrating the different forms of social power this has afforded to women. It sets out the part played by women in the nationalist movement, and the role of the women’s movement in the structuring of the independent Indonesian state, the politics of the immediate post-independence period and the transition to the authoritarian New Order. It analyses in detail the gender relations of the New Order regime, focused around the unitary family form supposed by the family system expounded in the New Order ideology and the contradictory implications of the opening up of the economy to foreign capital and ideas, for gender relations. It examines the forms of political activism that were possible for the women’s movement under the New Order, and the role it played in the fall of Suharto and the transition to democracy. The relationship between Islam and women in Indonesia is also addressed, with particular focus on the way in which Islam became a critical focus for political dissent in the late New Order period. Overall, this book provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between gender, religion and democracy in Indonesia, and is a vital resource for students of gender studies and Indonesian affairs.

Extreme Voices: A Dark Side of Civic Engagement

Abstract: "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right" -from Stealer's Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle with You" There are several reasons why Americans who have more opportunities than ever before to influence the actions of their government trust their government less than before. One explanation--popular two decades ago--is "overload." Noting the increase in interest group activity and popular participation described above, some democratic theorists expressed their concern that with encompassing organizations such as parties and unions declining, interestaggregating structures were being overwhelmed by the rise in interest articulation. Moreover, if the scope of government has expanded, so that expectations are higher than in the past, the problem would be compounded. Although the relevant evidence is mostly circumstantial, this explanation has a good deal of plausibility. More recently, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse have resurrected Bismarck's caution against watching the production of sausages or laws. Considering the low standing of Congress in relation to the presidency and the Supreme Court, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse argue that Congress is despised precisely because of its openness. Congress allows citizens to see democracy in all its messiness-interest groups lobbying, parties posturing, members dealing and compromising. Generalizing this argument, the more open American politics becomes, the less citizens can maintain the fiction of public-spirited officials working cooperatively to solve social problems and defuse social conflicts. Again, this explanation certainly is plausible. While seeing merit in both of the preceding hypotheses, I propose a third that is not inconsistent with either: the transition to a more participatory democracy increasingly has put politics into the hands of unrepresentative participators--extreme voices in the larger political debate. Consider another brief listing of research findings. Back in the 1960s political science students studied Anthony Downs's exposition of the centrist logic of two-party competition. A generation later intellectual inheritors of the Downsian tradition were working to develop models in which the candidates did not converge to the center. A changed reality caused this shift in the modeling agenda. During the 1980s pundits and scholars alike remarked on the (electorally) unhealthy influence of "cause groups" in the Democratic primaries who exerted a "left shift" on popular perceptions of Democratic candidates. With a "new Democrat" in titular control of his party for most of the 1990s, the problem has become more serious in the Republican Party, where observers judge that the religious right controls two-thirds of the state party organizations. Party activism today is ideologically motivated to a much greater extent than in the past. The demise of the spoils system, public sector unionization, conflict-of-interest laws, changes in our political culture, and other factors have cumulated to diminish the material rewards for party

Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China

Abstract: List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xix 1. Introduction: An Anthropology of Science Making and Policymaking 1 2. History: The "Ideology" Before the "Science" 45 making population science 79 3. A Chinese Marxian Statistics of Population 81 4. A Sinified Cybernetics of Population 125 5. A Chinese Marxian Humanism of Population 169 making population policy 191 6. The Scientific Revolution in Chengdu 193 7. Ally Recruitment in Beijing 232 8. Scientific Policymaking in Zhongnanhai 271 9. Conclusion: Why an Epistemic Approach Matters 307 Notes 345 List of Interviews 361 References 371 Index 395