Showing papers on "Ideology published in 2014"

Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology

Abstract: Metadata and data have become a regular currency for citizens to pay for their communication services and security—a trade-off that has nestled into the comfort zone of most people. This article deconstructs the ideological grounds of datafication. Datafication is rooted in problematic ontological and epistemological claims. As part of a larger social media logic, it shows characteristics of a widespread secular belief. Dataism, as this conviction is called, is so successful because masses of people — naively or unwittingly — trust their personal information to corporate platforms. The notion of trust becomes more problematic because people’s faith is extended to other public institutions (e.g. academic research and law enforcement) that handle their (meta)data. The interlocking of government, business, and academia in the adaptation of this ideology makes us want to look more critically at the entire ecosystem of connective media.

Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style

Abstract: As a key feature of the contemporary political landscape, populism stands as one of the most contentious concepts in political science. This article presents a critique of dominant conceptions of populism – as ideology, logic, discourse and strategy/organisation – and introduces the category of ‘political style’ as a new compelling way of thinking about the phenomenon. We argue that this new category captures an important dimension of contemporary populism that is missed by rival approaches. In doing so, we put forward an inductive model of populism as a political style and contextualise it within the increasingly stylised and mediatised milieu of contemporary politics by focusing on its performative features. We conclude by considering how this concept allows us to understand how populism appears across the political spectrum, how it translates into the political mainstream and its implications for democratic politics.

Understanding the Determinants of Political Ideology: Implications of Structural Complexity

Abstract: There has been a substantial increase in research on the determinants and consequences of political ideology among political scientists and social psychologists. In psychology, researchers have examined the effects of personality and motivational factors on ideological orientations as well as differences in moral reasoning and brain functioning between liberals and conservatives. In political science, studies have investigated possible genetic influences on ideology as well as the role of personality factors. Virtually all of this research begins with the assumption that it is possible to understand the determinants and consequences of ideology via a unidimensional conceptualization. We argue that a unidimensional model of ideology provides an incomplete basis for the study of political ideology. We show that two dimensions—economic and social ideology—are the minimum needed to account for domestic policy preferences. More importantly, we demonstrate that the determinants of these two ideological dimensions are vastly different across a wide range of variables. Focusing on a single ideological dimension obscures these differences and, in some cases, makes it difficult to observe important determinants of ideology. We also show that this multidimensionality leads to a significant amount of heterogeneity in the structure of ideology that must be modeled to fully understand the structure and determinants of political attitudes.

English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States

Abstract: The second edition of Rosina Lippi-Green's book, English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, continues the conversation from her 1997 first edition regardin...

Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology.

Abstract: Disputes between those holding differing political views are ubiquitous and deep-seated, and they often follow common, recognizable lines. The supporters of tradition and stability, sometimes referred to as conservatives, do battle with the supporters of innovation and reform, sometimes referred to as liberals. Understanding the correlates of those distinct political orientations is probably a prerequisite for managing political disputes, which are a source of social conflict that can lead to frustration and even bloodshed. A rapidly growing body of empirical evidence documents a multitude of ways in which liberals and conservatives differ from each other in purviews of life with little direct connection to politics, from tastes in art to desire for closure and from disgust sensitivity to the tendency to pursue new information, but the central theme of the differences is a matter of debate. In this article, we argue that one organizing element of the many differences between liberals and conservatives is the nature of their physiological and psychological responses to features of the environment that are negative. Compared with liberals, conservatives tend to register greater physiological responses to such stimuli and also to devote more psychological resources to them. Operating from this point of departure, we suggest approaches for refining understanding of the broad relationship between political views and response to the negative. We conclude with a discussion of normative implications, stressing that identifying differences across ideological groups is not tantamount to declaring one ideology superior to another.

American Conspiracy Theories

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction 2. But is it true? 3. Where our facts come from 4. Who are the conspiracy theorists? 5. The ages of conspiracy 6. Conspiracy theories are for losers 7. Conclusion

Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader

Abstract: "Bravo! Some of the most incisive students of neoliberalism gather together to present a stunning indictment of the destructiveness of the already discredited right-wing economic regime." Professor Michael Perelman, California State University, Chico "Across its thirty chapters, covering theoretical, empirical, policy and political aspects for different regions of the world, this collection of essays on neo-liberalism establishes that it is not merely a temporary phase of contemporary capitalism. Rather, it is the reflection of deep-rooted structures and processes, forging a rhythm in capitalist development that inevitably releases appalling consequences albeit in historically specific circumstances. In short, neo-liberalism, like imperialism, underdevelopment, fascism, world wars and so on, is not some aberration but an immanent aspect of capitalism." Professor Ben Fine, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London "This scholarly yet deeply engaged book will do much to to put the record straight on what neoliberalism is and what its actual effects have been on those who have gained from it and the much larger numbers who have been afflicted by it. The geographical scope and analytical sophistication of the contributions make it one of the few really reliable guides to this complex and life-threatening ideology." Professor Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology shaping our world today. It dictates the policies of governments, and shapes the actions of key institutions such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank. Its political and economic implications can hardly be overstated. Yet there are obvious problems with the neoliberal project. This book is a perfect introduction to neoliberalism that is ideal for anyone seeking a critical perspective. It explains the nature, history, strengths, weaknesses and implications of neoliberalism from the point of view of radical political economics. Short, self-contained chapters are written by leading experts in each field. The books is organised in three parts: the first section outlining neoliberal theory, the second exploring how neoliberalism has affected various policy areas, and a third looking at how neoliberal policies have played out in particular regions of the world. Using a broad range of left economic perspectives, from post-Keynesian to Marxist, this is a great resource for students of politics and economics, and anyone looking for a grounded critical approach to this broad subject.

On the Precipice of a “Majority-Minority” America Perceived Status Threat From the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans’ Political Ideology

Abstract: The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans' political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that making California's majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b revealed that making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly. Moreover, the results implicate group-status threat as the mechanism underlying these effects. Taken together, this work suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide.

Centring Housing in Political Economy

Abstract: The issue of “housing” has generally not been granted an important role in post-war political economy. Housing-as-policy has been the preserve of social policy analysis and of a growing field of housing studies; housing-as-market has been confined to mainstream economics. This paper insists that political-economic analysis can no longer remain relatively indifferent to the housing question since housing is implicated in the contemporary capitalist political economy in numerous critical, connected and very often contradictory ways. The paper conceptualizes this implication by identifying the multiple roles of housing when “capital” – the essential “stuff” of political economy – is considered from the perspective of each of its three primary, mutually constitutive guises: as process of circulation, as social relation and as ideology. Mobilizing these three optics to provide a critical overall picture of housing-in-political-economy (more than a political economy of housing), we draw on and weave tog...

Liberalism and Empire

Abstract: C. A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire.Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850-1920.These two volumes, among only a scattered handful of others in the Ideas in Context series, examine the responses of varied thinkers to the moral and political issues posed by the existence of empire and the growth of modern imperialism. Bayly's, indeed, is the very first among the one hundred published volumes in the series to move beyond European reflections on empire and give pride of place instead to intellectuals from the colonized world. Together liberal ideals and imperial practice incontestably exist at the heart of the modern world. Why, then, have the writings of Indian and other non-Western intellectuals, not to mention European theorists and critics of empire, received such cursory treatment in such an influential set of volumes? It is not possible to answer that question here, but fortunately the rapid rise of scholarly interest in imperialism over the last few years has spurred much new and exciting work on the ideology of empire. This outpouring of studies has even generated a subfield called "the new imperial history" devoted to exploring the links joining colony and metropole.The works under consideration here are at once complementary-the one focused on Indian political thought, the other on British-and comprehensive. Both volumes range very widely across time, and engage with an array of thinkers. Both authors also fulfill the mandate of the larger series by placing ideas firmly in the context in which they took shape, and ask how they participated in the intellectual discourse of their times. Bayly, in his first sentence, describes his task as examining "the ideas, projects and sensibilities of those Indian intellectuals . . . who broadly subscribed to the international liberal consensus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."1 Claeys, for his part, proposes to assess ". . . explanations of the origin of the British empire; justifications for its continuation; and criticisms of its consequences."2Sir Christopher Bayly-the first historian of the British Empire, it might be noted, to be knighted since Sir John Seeley over one hundred years ago-has had a distinguished career as Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge. Though he was never affiliated with any of the major historiographical schools of the last decades-the socalled Cambridge school of the 1970s, the Subaltern Studies Collective of the 1980s, or the postcolonial cultural "turn" of the 1990s-Bayly's wideranging publications across Indian and Imperial history have stimulated scholarship throughout the discipline and beyond, most notably among those many postgraduate students he has trained. So it is appropriate that Bayly should now add his own definitive account to the on-going scholarly discussion of the political theory of empire.Indian liberals have been maligned ever since they came into existence as a visible group of English-educated young men in the 1840s and '50s. During the high colonial era of the late nineteenth century they were disparaged by the British as mere talkers, as self-interested job seekers, and as a minuscule coterie who sought to speak for a non-existent Indian "nation," but in fact represented no one but themselves. Nationalist writers and political leaders, from the 1890s onward, dismissed their liberal predecessors (and contemporaries) as ineffectual mendicants and bourgeois hangers-on of the Raj. By the Gandhian era, with two or three notable exceptions, among them Dadabhai Naoroji and G. K. Gokhale, India's Victorian liberals had disappeared altogether from the canon of the nation's heroes. Finally, in the postcolonial era, scholars such as Homi Bhabha derided them as inauthentic "mimic men" who tried to be, but could never truly be, English.3 Indian liberalism, unlike its British counterpart, was thus, as Bayly correctly argues, "embattled from the beginning by powerful ideologies that largely rejected it. …

After the “Master Theory”: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis

Abstract: Drawing on the pioneering work of Anthony Downs, political scientists have tended to characterize American politics as a game among undifferentiated competitors, played out largely through elections, with outcomes reflecting how formal rules translate election results into legislative votes. In this perspective, voters, campaigns, elections, and the ideological distribution of legislators merit extensive scrutiny. Other features of the political environment— most notably, the policies these legislators help create and the interest groups that struggle over these policies—are deemed largely peripheral. However, contemporary politics often looks very different than the world described by Downs. Instead, it more closely resembles the world described by E. E. Schattschneider—a world in which policy and organized groups loom large, the role of elections and voters is highly conditional, and the key struggle is not over gaining office but over reshaping governance in enduring ways. Over the last twenty years, a growing body of scholarship has emerged that advances this corrective vision—an approach we call “policy-focused political science.” In this framework, politics is centrally about the exercise of government authority for particular substantive purposes. Such exercises of authority create the “terrain” for political struggle, profoundly shaping both individual and group political behavior. Even more important, precisely because policies can have such substantial effects, they also serve as the “prize” for many of the most enduring players in the political arena, especially organized interest groups. The payoffs of a policy-focused perspective include a more accurate portrayal of the institutional environment of modern politics, an appreciation for the fundamental importance of organized groups, a better understanding of the dynamics of policy change, and a more accurate mapping of interests, strategies, and influence. These benefits are illustrated through a brief examination of two of the biggest changes in American politics over the last generation: partisan polarization and rising economic inequality.

Ideology in civil war Instrumental adoption and beyond

Abstract: How important is ideology for the analysis of civil war? In contrast to literature that neglects ideology in its emphasis on structural variables or situational incentives, this article argues for ...

What Is Liberalism

Abstract: Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways in political thought and social science. This essay challenges how the liberal tradition is typically understood. I start by delineating different types of response—prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory—that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. Liberalism, on this (comprehensive) account, is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time and space. In the remainder of the article, I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how Locke came to be characterised as a liberal. I argue that the scope of the liberal tra...

The art of not being governed

Abstract: Street frequenting children and youth in many countries in South East Asia are perceived by the State and mainstream society to be upsetting ideological constructions of citizenship, based on middle class values and to be committing a ‘transgressive act’ by violating the moral boundaries of the ideal family, school and community (Cresswell, 1996). The children who work on the streets in Siem Reap, Cambodia are not conforming to the desired image of the ‘ideal child’ and their constant existence and mobility represents a menace to the success of the State, which is based on the sedentary lifestyles and the view that the family structure is irreplaceable, and the nation is modern and ‘developing’. As a result of this perceived transgression, the State and dominant groups, attempts to stigmatise, oppress and conceal undesirable children, and to limit the physical spaces in which they can operate. Drawing on James Scott’s (1990) concepts of ‘hidden’ and ‘public’ transcripts and ‘the Art of Not Being Governed’ (2010), this chapter examines how the children and youth who work on the streets of Siem Reap, are able to continue working and achieve mental and physical freedom from their psychic alienation from the State and society. An analysis of their subcultures reveals how they have been able to construct alternative identities as a form of resistance to the constraints placed on them. The subversive and geographical strategies provide a matrix within which they develop feelings of self worth, contest their marginalisation, and counteract the overload of identities attributed to them. These strategies can be recognised as political resistance and as a ‘hidden transcript’. As such they may be understood as articulated feelings of passive resistance at the way they have been consistently ignored and alienated from society and the ‘public transcript’ (Scott, 1990:119); ;

Why are You Taking this Stance? Identifying and Classifying Reasons in Ideological Debates

Abstract: Recent years have seen a surge of interest in stance classification in online debates. Oftentimes, however, it is important to determine not only the stance expressed by an author in her debate posts, but also the reasons behind her supporting or opposing the issue under debate. We therefore examine the new task of reason classification in this paper. Given the close interplay between stance classification and reason classification, we design computational models for examining how automatically computed stance information can be profitably exploited for reason classification. Experiments on our reason-annotated corpus of ideological debate posts from four domains demonstrate that sophisticated models of stances and reasons can indeed yield more accurate reason and stance classification results than their simpler counterparts.

The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique

Abstract: What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our timePolanyi contends that the free market championed by market liberals never actually existed While markets are essential to enable individual choice, they cannot be self-regulating because they require ongoing state action Furthermore, they cannot by themselves provide such necessities of social existence as education, health care, social and personal security, and the right to earn a livelihood When these public goods are subjected to market principles, social life is threatened and major crises ensueDespite these theoretical flaws, market principles are powerfully seductive because they promise to diminish the role of politics in civic and social life Because politics entails coercion and unsatisfying compromises among groups with deep conflicts, the wish to narrow its scope is understandable But like Marx's theory that communism will lead to a "withering away of the State," the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous

CEO Ideology as an Element of the Corporate Opportunity Structure for Social Activists

Abstract: In an effort to comprehend activism toward corporations, scholars have proposed the concept of corporate opportunity structure, or the attributes of individual firms that make them more (or less) attractive as activist targets. We theorize that the personal values of the firm's elite decision makers constitute a key element of this corporate opportunity structure. We specifically consider the political ideology--conservatism versus liberalism--of the company's CEO as a signal for employees who are considering the merits of engaging in activism. To test of our theory, we examine the formation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employee groups in major companies in the period 1985-2004, when the formation of such groups was generally perceived to be risky for participants. Using CEOs' records of political donations to measure their personal ideologies, we find strong evidence that the political liberalism of CEOs influences the likelihood of activism. We also find that CEOs' ideologies influence activism more strongly when CEOs are more powerful, when they oversee more conservative (i.e., less liberal) workplaces, and when the social movement is in the early phase of development. We identify theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research opportunities

Do needs for security and certainty predict cultural and economic conservatism? A cross-national analysis.

Abstract: We examine whether individual differences in needs for security and certainty predict conservative (vs. liberal) position on both cultural and economic political issues and whether these effects are conditional on nation-level characteristics and individual-level political engagement. Analyses with cross-national data from 51 nations reveal that valuing conformity, security, and tradition over self-direction and stimulation (a) predicts ideological self-placement on the political right, but only among people high in political engagement and within relatively developed nations, ideologically constrained nations, and non-Eastern European nations, (b) reliably predicts right-wing cultural attitudes and does so more strongly within developed and ideologically constrained nations, and (c) on average predicts left-wing economic attitudes but does so more weakly among people high in political engagement, within ideologically constrained nations, and within non-Eastern European nations. These findings challenge the prevailing view that needs for security and certainty organically yield a broad right-wing ideology and that exposure to political discourse better equips people to select the broad ideology that is most need satisfying. Rather, these findings suggest that needs for security and certainty generally yield culturally conservative but economically left-wing preferences and that exposure to political discourse generally weakens the latter relation. We consider implications for the interactive influence of personality characteristics and social context on political attitudes and discuss the importance of assessing multiple attitude domains, assessing political engagement, and considering national characteristics when studying the psychological origins of political attitudes.

Landscapes of antagonism: Local governance, neoliberalism and austerity:

Abstract: This paper offers an engagement with theoretical deficits in some uses of neoliberalism as an explanatory concept. It draws on theories of ideology, of governmentality and of assemblage to offer alternative conceptions of the relationship between neoliberalism and its others, and to illuminate the ambiguous and contradictory role of local governments in the UK in processes of neoliberalisation. The paper develops an analysis of local governments as strategic actors in the ‘landscapes of antagonism’ generated by current cycles of economic, political and governance change, and argues for more attention to be paid to the relationship between theory, politics and critique.

The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea

Abstract: Biological races do not exist and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today."""""The Myth of Race" traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned Aryans, as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas s new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking.Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why when it comes to race too many people still mistake bigotry for science."

The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture

Abstract: Only 150 years ago, the majority of the world's population was largely illiterate. Today, not only do most people over fifteen have basic reading and writing skills, but 20 percent of the population attends some form of higher education. What are the effects of such radical, large-scale change? David Baker argues that the education revolution has transformed our world into a schooled society-that is, a society that is actively created and defined by education. Drawing on neo-institutionalism, The Schooled Society shows how mass education interjects itself and its ideologies into culture at large: from the dynamics of social mobility, to how we measure intelligence, to the values we promote. The proposition that education is a primary rather than a "reactive" institution is then tested by examining the degree to which education has influenced other large-scale social forces, such as the economy, politics, and religion. Rich, groundbreaking, and globally-oriented, The Schooled Society sheds light on how mass education has dramatically altered the face of society and human life.

Peranan kearifan lokal dalam pendidikan karakter

Abstract: This article aims to examine on a wealth of local wisdom in Indonesia that plays a role in shaping the character education. Local wisdom will only be lasting if local knowledge implemented in concrete everyday life so that they can respond and answer the current times have changed. Local wisdom should also be implemented in state policy, for example by applying economic policy based on mutual cooperation and kinship as one manifestation of our local wisdom. To achieve that, state ideology (Pancasila) should be implemented in a variety of state policy. Thus, local knowledge will effectively function as a weapon-not just heritage-that equip people to respond and answer the current era. Preserving various elements of local wisdom, traditions and local institutions, including the norms and customs that are beneficial, can function effectively in character education, while doing study and enrichment with new wisdoms.

Political Intolerance, Right and Left

Abstract: Research recently published in Political Psychology suggested that political intolerance is more strongly predicted by political conservatism than liberalism. Our findings challenge that conclusion. Participants provided intolerance judgments of several targets and the political objective of these targets (left-wing vs. right-wing) was varied between subjects. Across seven judgments, conservatism predicted intolerance of left-wing targets, while liberalism predicted intolerance of right-wing targets. These relationships were fully mediated by perceived threat from targets. Moreover, participants were biased against directly opposing political targets: conservatives were more intolerant of a left-wing target than the opposing right-wing target (e.g., pro-gay vs. anti-gay rights activists), while liberals were more intolerant of a right-wing target than the opposing left-wing target. These findings are discussed within the context of the existing political intolerance and motivated reasoning literatures.

Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America

Abstract: 1. Introduction: distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler 2. The coalition merchants: ideologies, parties, and their interaction 3. Creative synthesis: why ideology? 4. The independent development of ideology 5. Ideology remakes the parties 6. Issue politics in ideological context 7. Polarized parties 8. Conclusion: toward the study of creative synthesis.

Living in a multicultural world: Intergroup ideologies and the societal context of intergroup relations

Abstract: In a relatively short time span, issues of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity have become central topics of discussion in various nations. As a result, the role of broad ideologies that frame and structure relations between groups has received increasing attention by social psychologists. Of particular concern has been the role of these intergroup ideologies in promoting intergroup harmony and reducing prejudice. In this article, we appraise the evidence related to three main intergroup ideologies, assimilation, colourblindness, and multiculturalism. We argue that research in this area has paid insufficient attention to the social and political context. Intergroup ideologies have been studied and conceptualised as being located solely within individual minds. We suggest that the potentially vital aspect of these ideologies is that they are sometimes widely shared by members of a social group. Integrating sociological and political analyses, we discuss the fact that intergroup ideologies are institu...

The marketization of religion: : field, capital, and consumer identity

Abstract: Certain institutions traditionally have had broad socializing influence over their members, providing templates for identity that comprehend all aspects of life from the existential and moral to the mundanely material. Marketization and detraditionalization undermine that socializing role. This study examines the consequences when, for some members, such an institution loses its authority to structure identity. With a hermeneutical method and a perspective grounded in Bourdieu's theories of fields and capital, this research investigates the experiences of disaffected members of a religious institution and consumption field. Consumers face severe crises of identity and the need to rebuild their self-understandings in an unfamiliar marketplace of identity resources. Unable to remain comfortably in the field of their primary socialization, they are nevertheless bound to it by investments in field-specific capital. In negotiating this dilemma, they demonstrate the inseparability and co-constitutive nature of ideology and consumption.

‘When saying you care is not really caring’: emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education

Abstract: Drawing on one of the author’s experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion studies, it is shown how whiteness ideology erroneously translates disgust for people of color to false professions of pity or caring. This phenomenon is particularly interesting because care, sympathy, and love are emotions that are routinely performed by teacher candidates (who are predominantly white females) and embedded in teacher education. Yet not much literature theorizes how these performative emotions are not exempt of whiteness ideology. To engage in a genuine process of antiracism, we argue that the emotions that undergird teachers’ dispositions need to be critically and sensitively unpacked. We end with implications for teacher education, particularly in relat...

Propaganda as Signaling

Abstract: Why do authoritarian governments engage in propaganda when citizens often know that their governments are propagandizing and therefore resist, ignore, or disparage the messages? While propaganda is traditionally understood as a means to indoctrinate the masses with pro-regime values and attitudes, i.e., it “brainwashes” people, I propose a theory that propaganda is often not used for indoctrination, but rather to signal the government’s strength in maintaining social control and political order, i.e., it intimidates citizens. I use unique survey data from China to test the argument. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, Chinese college students with more exposure to state propaganda in the form of ideological and political education do not have a more positive view of China’s government and political system, but they are more likely to believe that the regime is strong in maintaining political order and social stability, and less willing to participate in political dissent. Additional evidences consistent with the theory are also briefly discussed.

Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives

Abstract: Researchers in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have often pointed to grammar as a locus of ideology in discourse. This book illustrates the role that grammars as models of language (and image) can play in revealing ideological properties of texts and discourse in social and political contexts. The book takes the reader through three distinct grammatical frameworks – functional grammar, multimodal grammar and cognitive grammar. Using examples taken from a range of discourses relating to globalisation, including discourses of immigration, war, corporate practice and political protests, the book demonstrates the individual utility and the interconnectedness of these models inside CDA. A key argument advanced is that the cognitive processes necessarily involved in making sense of language are based in visual experience. This position offers new ways of understanding the ideological effects of grammatical choices in texts and suggests a reassessment of the relationship between linguistic and multimodal grammars in CDA. The book will appeal to students and researchers interested in CDA and the relationship between discourse, cognition and social action.