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Numerous media commentators have deemed the sexual harassment locker room incident between Lisa Olson and the New England Patriots to he an embarrassing case of mismanagement. Our analysis challenges this popular assumption: we argue that the event represents an overt manifestation of male power by means of sexual violence against women. The response to Olson suggests that in an era where women's entry into sport has challenged men's exclusive hold on that domain, the locker room, like the playing field, must be understood as contested terrain. For men to maintain control over the terrain of the locker room, the female sportswriter must he displaced from her role as authoritative critic of male performance and reassigned to her role of sexual object. In light of the importance of sport, and the status of the locker room as an inner sanctum of male privilege, the incident between Olson and the Patriots was not mismanaged at all but, in fact, handled effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued today that representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians, political parties and even the political system is lower than ever, and for many people politics is at best an entertaining spectacle. At the same time, new forms of politics have emerged. In The End of Representative Politics, Simon Tormey argues that these new forms of politics represent a hope for the future. They do so by eschewing old forms of representative politics in a 'politics without representatives', and we have seen this in, among other places, the alter-globalisation protests, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the indignados in Spain, Occupy Wall Street, and anti-government protests in Brazil and Turkey. These new forms of politics challenge our assumptions about politics and representation, and force us to think beyond the traditional party based democratic institutions - and that's a good thing too. In this review symposium, Lisa Disch, Pablo Ouziel, Neal Lawson and Simon Tormey discuss the future of representative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the constructivist approaches in understanding the important differences that exist between constructivist and other democratic theories of political representation. Topics discussed by the author include their relationship to the standard account of representation, their intellectual lineage, and approach to normative analysis, the significance of radical democratic theory, and the comparison between constructivism and democracy.

The article presents an essay on French writer Christine Delphy's views on gender, social hierarchy, and French materialist feminism. It talks about constructivist materialism and social classes for women. The article talks about Saussurean semiotics as per linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Also discussed is the oppression of women, patriarchy, and materiality of sex.

The article discusses several essays written for a roundtable in celebration of Joel Olson's work that was convened at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association in 2012. It mentions about theory and practice that lead to the considerations back to the question of politics of personal ethical project. It further informs about whiteness and the social formation, and democracy through abolition.

This article compares the conceptions of democratic representation found in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Hanna Pitkin. Whereas Laclau takes Pitkin as his foil, I contend that her treatment of representation has much more in common with Laclau's than he gives her credit for. Pitkin made a bold critique of foundationalist notions of responsiveness and acknowledged representation's constitutive function. Yet, her antipathy to symbolic representation made Pitkin recoil from the most radical implications of her argument: she would see as a threat to democratic politics that which Laclau casts as its vitality. Laclau's work, then, does not merely refute Pitkin's but advances a line of argument that she set into motion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article juxtaposes the Tea Party movement in the US with the European ‘precarity’ movement to advance a counterintuitive argument. Whereas Tea Party supporters' politics is conservative, their material commitments and aspects of their rhetoric place them in a liberal genealogy: they defend interests and distinctions that are a New Deal inheritance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes what I term “the dilemma of democratic competence,” which emerges when researchers find their expectations regarding democratic responsiveness to be in conflict with their findings regarding the context dependency of individual preferences. I attribute this dilemma to scholars' normative expectations, rather than to deficiencies of mass democratic politics. I propose a mobilization conception of political representation and develop a systemic understanding of reflexivity as the measure of its legitimacy. This article thus contributes to the emergent normative argument that political representation is intrinsic to democratic government, and links that claim to empirical research on political preference formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented which discusses a political theory by philosopher Bruno Latour regarding how political ecologists should consider themselves as spokespersons representing a political view. She refutes Latour's concept of political representatives as spokespersons and suggests he views them as mediators who translate political messages.

Explores a number of “departures” to address far-reaching ethical and theoretical debates about the concept of representation within the field of feminist Holocaust studies. Details of the conference which presented a number of points of departure hosted by the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in April 2001; Conceptualization of the Holocaust among academics and among feminist theorists in terms of the commonsense notion of representation; Background information on feminist Holocaust scholarship.

Discusses the impartiality, storytelling, and the seductions of narrative. Women's special survival skills; Clash between opposing intellectual frameworks; Association between storytelling and feminist critical theory and practice.

The outcome of Bill Clinton's health care initiative presents policy analysts and democratic theorists with a puzzle: How could vigorous discussion of health reform, introduced into the context of an emerging public consensus about its urgency, produce widespread incomprehension of the issue and foster public reluctance to embrace any specific proposal for change? Starting from the perspective of political theories of deliberative democracy, I approach the puzzle of failed health reform by pointing to the paradox of decision making in an adversary democracy. First, I argue that the policy initiative stalled because the debate was set up to depoliticize the question of health reform and thereby disengage citizens from the problem. Second, I defend a conception of "power-sensitive" deliberation, which I argue is a check against two typical mechanisms of depoliticization: factionalism and the "democratic wish." Third, I suggest four criteria for power-sensitive deliberation, which I then use to analyze the recent health care debates. Finally, I explore the incentives and obstacles to creating opportunities for this kind of deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides a critical interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel entitled `La Nouvelle Heloise.' Focus on women's friendship as exemplified by the characters Claire and Julie; Differences among ways novel is read by scholars of political theory and literature; Feminist writers view of the novel.

Discusses the sexual harassment controversy between sports reporter Lisa Olson and Boston's New England Patriots football team players. Olson's presence in the team's locker room as an excess of gender certainties in sports; Violation of a reporter's gender-neutral right of access to players; Caucasian Olson versus black players; Allegations that looking is a sexual transgression.

Discusses Hannah Arendt's use of methodological innovations while writing about totalitarianism. Arendt's argument of totalitarianism as an unprecedented problem of understanding; Political philosophy; Apologies for storytelling as disingenuous; Arendt's storytelling as alternative to detached reasoning; Description of Arendt's essays.

An introduction is presented in which the editor talks about articles published in the journal issue on topics related to western feminist theories, feminism in the 1970s, and women's liberation.

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including the faculty of color representing diversity in political academics, simultaneous invisibility and hyper visibility of women of color and political transformation within the academy.