Search

This discussion of two related papers on political activism by Bettina von Lieres and Afarin Kohan focuses on the mechanism of transformation from psychic experience into political action. In both papers, the move to political action is seen as a consequence of collectivization, politics being understood as a function of groups, but a distinction is made between brute politics and the elaboration of the political as a psychoanalytic process. The original papers are seen as furthering the aims of social psychoanalysis and community psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depoliticization has emerged as a key concept in analyzing the changing political dynamics of capitalist democracies. Yet, the concept of public interest has been relatively absent in depoliticization literature. This article argues for a more systematic inclusion of public interest politics in scrutinizing de- and repoliticization. The argument is advanced through strategic-relational theory by interpreting public interest as (1) a terrain of political struggles, (2) a mode of doing politics and (3) a method of enquiry. These dynamics are examined in the empirical context of Finnish forest industry's political strategy in the Kaipola paper mill closure in August 2020. The forest conglomerate UPM-Kymmene politicized its paper mill shutdown by shifting the responsibility to the centre-left governmental coalition's purportedly business-hostile policies. However, analyzing the case through UPM strategies and the paper production crisis, the closure falls in line with the forest industry's long-term business strategy. The forest industry's and UPM's strategy is recognized as a forceful defense of a corporate polity where public interest is equated with the success of key economic actors. The article concludes with an argument for the politics of public interest as a vital research perspective for analyzing contradictions surrounding 'the economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge" by Hannah Star Rogers explores the intersection of art, science, and technology studies (ASTS). The author examines specific episodes in the history of science where science has generated aesthetic objects and instances where artists have attempted to insert themselves into scientific endeavors. However, the reviewer criticizes the book for its narrow focus and lack of historical depth, suggesting that it offers a frivolous perspective on the distinction between art and science. The reviewer finds the book's use of lofty language and references to be wearisome and lacking in substance. [Extracted from the article]

Many authors argue that candidates are more popular among voters from their own region. Two potential explanations have been suggested: voters' identification with their home region, and the representation of regional interests. The information on candidates' residence can be transmitted to voters in different ways, the most easily accessible way being information printed on the ballot paper. However, most studies on "friends and neighbour voting" use aggregate data. Studies that rely on individual level data usually put respondents in hypothetical situations and confront them with synthetic candidates, reducing their realism. To bridge this gap and to test the effect of providing information on the candidates' residence, we use data from a survey experiment to analyze voters' responses to ballot paper information on the regional background of real candidates in the 2014 European election in Germany. We find that voters in an open list PR election are more likely to support regional candidates if ballot paper information on the candidates' geographic background helps them to do so. The appeal of personal ties is a stronger explanation for vote preference than the one based on regional interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Volatile States in International Politics" by Eleonora Mattiacci explores the increasing unpredictability of state behavior in world politics. The book combines statistical data and archival frames of reference to explain the concept of "volatility" in international politics, its causes, impact, and potential remedies. The author examines factors that contribute to interstate volatility, such as relative power and resource availability, and proposes novel methods for measuring volatility. The book also provides a detailed assessment of countries engaged in strategic rivalry and explores the prevalence of volatility in interactions between countries with defensive commitments. While the book emphasizes the importance of understanding volatility, it neglects the larger context of the security dilemma and the potential value of creative diplomacy in countering volatility. Overall, "Volatile States in International Politics" is a well-written and valuable introduction to the concept of volatility in international politics. [Extracted from the article]

Nevertheless, based upon her interviews with Malay-Muslim women in Thailand's Deep South, Streicher asserts that "some young women...found soldiers handsome... [and as the] civilized Other of I Malayness i (110)." Following the post-2004 exacerbation of Deep South insurrection, the military has increasingly promoted itself to Deep South locals as an institution of fatherly benevolence. Streicher concludes by arguing that Thailand's 2014-2019 military junta used imperial practices of policing which re-applied tactics used in the Deep South. [Extracted from the article]

In her first book, Jill Jarvis makes the case for literature's 'unexpected, disruptive, and surreptitious power to make ghosts perceptible, and to make possible what state violence has rendered nearly unimaginable' (2). Most notable is Jarvis' meticulously detailed investigation of a myriad of documents which makes her book a useful reference for scholars of North Africa. [Extracted from the article]

Irving has done an excellent job in describing Childe's political journey and mapping it onto his prehistoric archaeological scholarship in a way that enhances both. While many of Childe's specific proposals about European history have either been amended or have evolved to the point where he no longer remains a touchstone, European archaeology still operates in the framework largely created by Childe's grand syntheses. After this Childe found work as private secretary to John Storey, NSW Labor member for Balmain, first in opposition and then in government, Storey becoming Premier in 1920. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Historical socio-political processes have produced gross inequity of health resource for Aboriginal Australians and New Zealand Māori. Objectives: This paper argues that socio-political factors resulting from the entrenchment of colonialism have produced significant personal and structural barriers to the utilisation of healthcare services and directly impact the health status of these two vulnerable groups. Design: Discussion Paper. Conclusions: Understanding the actual barriers preventing the utilisation of healthcare facilities, as perceived by Indigenous people, is essential in reducing the gross disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous morbidity and mortality in Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this analysis was to obtain local citation behavior data on undergraduates researching history, political science, and sociology papers. The study found that students cited books and journals even with the availability of web sources; however, usage varied by subject. References to specific websites' domains also varied across subject area. Most of the top journal titles that students referenced were online and locally owned. Students cited a broader range of journal titles than predicted by the Law of Scattering and cited titles across a wide array of subject areas. This data helped identify potential gaps in the library's collection and services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines how the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program in Ghana is politicised and its implications for poverty reduction. Data from 26 in-depth interviews and 12 focus group discussions were analysed. The paper observes that a broad cross-party consensus exists because the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program has been politicised by the two main political parties, namely the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party, who target the policy to their politically supportive districts and communities. The key pathway for the politicisation and subsequent expansion of the program is partisan manipulation of the District Level Implementation Committees (DLICs), partisan selection of beneficiaries, and party membership card as a requirement for inclusion. These political considerations tend to result in wrong targeting, where undeserving beneficiaries are included, thereby undermining sustained poverty reduction and inclusive development potential of the LEAP program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate movement has mobilised unprecedented numbers of people to address the issue of climate change. Notably, this movement has seen significant participation from young people who, as they will bear the brunt of the climate crisis in the coming decades, have voiced the urgency of the situation. By representing the future, these young climate activists have made the effects of the climate crisis tangible and personal. Drawing on feminist and constructivist representation theory, this paper examines the role of representative claims about future generations by young people in global environmental and climate politics. In their interactions with fora such as UNFCCC meetings , young people often find themselves marginalised. Despite this relative powerlessness, I argue that through their descriptive claims to represent future generations, they have appropriated and reshaped the concept of intergenerational justice. This paper details the intricate interplay between marginalisation and representation experienced by youth-led environmental groups. It contributes to the conceptualisation of political representation as a discursive practice of future-making by marginalised actors in the context of global climate politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approaches to individual languages and language families can develop in relation to movements such as nationalism, imperialism, or cosmopolitanism. Craig Brandist's paper draws upon developments in Dalit Studies to problematise the claim familiar from some postcolonial scholarship that Indo-European philology was a European imposition upon the linguistic landscape of South Asia. Because of its central role in both our sense-making and our sociality, language is inherently political. [Extracted from the article]

The authors sought to explore the implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's establishment of Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). Summit participants, who discussed best practices and issues to be addressed when designing and implementing ACOs. Healthcare leaders from across the country in charge of running, developing, and/or implementing ACOs for health systems. Participants were asked to consider the challenges, benefits, and strategies to ACO implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am a passionate advocate for historical research. It provides insight, context, illuminates the dynamics of our discipline and should anchor everything we think, write, and profess in the present. Careful historical research can question, undermine, and revise the existing set of representations that underwire our subject. It may help us untangle why certain views of the subject, topic, period, or person remain in wide currency, explaining the power relations, politics, institution building and wider discursive and non-discursive factors that foreclose, enhance, or otherwise influence what we think, write, teach, and practice. We desperately need more research that challenges everything we take for granted and fail to subject to scrutiny. This paper reflects a call to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Debord's the society of the spectacle and Evans and Giroux's notion of the spectacle of violence, this paper argues that a discourse on war, organised violence, and global politics has been disseminated through a military-entertainment complex that has commodified militarism into a practice of consumption. Drawing on first-person shooter (FPS) video games as a context, the paper considers the market for these games, the conditions of their creation, and the way they are marketed. The paper discusses three ways in which FPS games function as part of a contemporary spectacle of violence: through their intertextual connections to other forms of military entertainment; through the immersive experience they offer; and through the geopolitical position they establish. The paper concludes by establishing FPS games as complex, sophisticated cultural artefacts that both draw on and shape wider discourses on war and the military, in the age of the spectacle of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate security, albeit highly contested, is moving beyond the discursive realm into policies and practices that implicate the control of land, water and forests. Through a systematic literature review this paper offers a typology of climate security practices. It observes a shift towards human security framing, offering potential for agrarian struggles. However, risks remain: the depoliticisation of scarcity, control-seeking over natural resources, a push for neoliberal approaches, a dominant focus on violent conflict, and knowledge politics. Alternative approaches are suggested, foregrounding place-specific alliances that address the politics of conflict and embrace plurality of knowledges, contributing to (agrarian) climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores hope as a dominant framing for critical social theory in the era of the Anthropocene. It suggests that with the dissolution of modernist assumptions of human exceptionality, universal causality and temporal progress, critical social theory can be understood as having shifted fields. This shift is from the field of the seen – the field of appearances (i.e. the world of politics, of rational subjects, instrumental rationality and aspirations of progress) – to the field of the unseen (towards approaches which can be understood as working with or drawing upon a world which is beyond or below appearances). It will be argued that the Anthropocene is central to this shift from the centrality of questions of transparency and of politics to those of opacity and hope. This is in part because the Anthropocene is seen to have emerged behind the backs of political reason, unseen and unintended. If the Anthropocene as a condition is the product of taking a narrow reductive approach to the world, as framed in the modern ontology, then access to the unseen world becomes a necessity. The different forms of hope engaged with in this paper articulate distinct understandings of this 'other world' beyond appearances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the shift in international water law from traditional nation-state governance to embracing hydrological units such as watersheds through the lens of scalar politics. It scrutinizes how the United Nations Water Conventions, by advocating various legal principles such as equity and no harm, have triggered rescaling in transboundary water governance globally. Through an extensive survey of legal documents, this paper further uncovers diverse scalar reconfigurations that permeate bilateral, multilateral and regional water treaties and interface with existing social, political and legal structures across different regions, highlighting the multiplicity of rescaling processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the intricate relationship between religio-political influence and its impact on social work in contemporary India. The escalating trends of majoritarianism, homogeneity, the instrumentalization of religion for political power, growing inequality, and the prevalence of caste-based violence have contributed to an alarming increase in intolerance among various religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. These challenges, primarily driven by religio-political factions in India, pose significant obstacles to effective social work practice and intervention. The question arises: Can social work disentangle itself from religion and religio-political influence, or should a new narrative be developed within social work practice to address these concepts? This article underscores the pressing need for a fresh perspective that integrates religion, religiopolitics, and their influence on social work. New narrative can facilitate the development of effective strategies and interventions that mitigate the adverse effects of religio-political factions while promoting social justice and inclusivity. In conclusion, this paper emphasizes the necessity of reimagining the relationship between religion, religio-politics, and social work in India. Thus, social work can play a crucial role in fostering positive societal change, addressing inequality, and countering the rising tide of intolerance fueled by religio-political influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how neoliberal ideologies inform both social and political agendas that influence how social workers can provide support to trans and gender diverse people attempting to access gender-affirming healthcare, using an analysis of social workers' experiences working in mental health in Nova Scotia, Canada. Qualitative semi-structured interviews provide a perspective of the experiences of social workers in Nova Scotia and how their ability to provide mental health services to trans and gender diverse people is impacted by neoliberalism. Most social workers attributed the structural context of working within a bio-medical system as contributing to social workers being disempowered, undermined, and not able to practice according to the values of their profession thus limiting their ability to provide affirming mental health supports to trans and gender diverse people in ways that align with their social work professional ethics and values. Through examining how neoliberal ideologies create notions of ideal social citizens by controlling the body, the paper explores how lived experience of neoliberal practices in mental health social work reinforce transnormativity. This paper highlights the necessity for social workers to resist dominant neoliberal and medicalized discourses which serve as mechanisms of power and control. The paper concludes with recommendations for social work practice with trans and gender diverse populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer collective action is commonly connected to individualised politics, market responsibility and local utopias. In this paper, we take an alternative point of departure and discuss the (emergence of) neo-materialist movement organisations (NMMOs) as mobilising prefigurative everyday politics in local organising and creating strategies toward alternative global futures. Our approach is threefold. First, we introduce the concept of neo-materialist movement organisations and, second, outline their organising in the everyday context and prefigurative commitments. Third, we explore different strategies of scaling toward alternative futures with particular focus on (controversial) institutional avenues. We contribute to the emerging literature on prefigurative politics in consumer movements by problematising the dominant approach to social change trapped in local inwardness. We further highlight the potential for systemic changes via local authorities, or what we call scaling through institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic literature review exploring the Family Group Conferencing experiences with racially minoritised families in England. The literature search identified eight qualitative studies that met the inclusion criteria. This review found that racially minoritised families felt that Family Group Conferencing was empowering and met their cultural needs at times, but suggested caution about how culturally adaptable the approach is for this population. We argue that FGC could be presented as an Indigenous model of engaging with family networks with relevance for social workers working with racially minoritised communities in England. We suggest that Family Group Conferencing aligns with aims of decolonisation and cultural competence and argue the need to explore how Indigenous knowledge can be valued more effectively in global social work debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The substantive and the political are part of most educational endeavors. Researchers tend to be cast as more powerful in interactions between research and practice. This structural historical hierarchy is at the backdrop of research-practice partnerships (RPP) and threatens to marginalize practitioners' perspectives. Drawing on Bakhtin and Goffman and responding to a set of papers that transcend these structural constraints, I propose productive tension between alterity and affinity as a framework for analyzing and designing equitable and generative RPP. In broaching different design goals, set in different contexts, and employing different strategies, the papers in this special issue each depict a productive RPP in which all participants were able to contribute and influence each other, as well as advance efficacious and just educational programs. Part of RPPs' contribution is having the values and practices of both research and practice intermingle and shape educational design and enactment. Therefore, what is needed is an interactional structure that invites participants to draw on their communities of affiliation while establishing a climate in which interactions operate on a level plane and each participant's perspective is invited and valued, but open to face-saving modifications. I suggest that such conditions arise from a productive tension in the dialectic between alterity—the distinction between research and practice—and affinity—the kinship and identification with shared goals between research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both political theorists and scholars working on populism with an ideational approach have frequently noted that populists are averse to compromise. However, the negative relationship between populism and compromise has not been analyzed in detail. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive account of the reasons behind this oft-repeated conflict between populist narratives and the practice of compromise, disentangling the various dimensions of such incompatibility and exploring their connections. We rely on theoretical and empirical research on populism, supplemented by illustrative examples and references to political theory with an anti-pluralist coloration and the opponents thereof. We compare populist objections with Baume and Papadopoulos’s typology of objections to political compromises. We demonstrate that populist objections only partly overlap with those inventoried in the typology, notably along the moral and antagonistic dimensions, while the populist claim that compromises denature the unmediated expression of the popular will has not been considered before. Through an exploratory case study, we further reflect on how populists justify compromises when they are in power, notwithstanding their ideological reluctances. Our paper enriches the study of the ideational elements of populism while advancing research on the perception of compromises in democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menasseh ben-Israel petitioned to re-admit Jews to England in 1655. Historians have been aware that Menasseh utilized the ideas employed by Simone Luzzatto in Luzzatto’s efforts to avoid the expulsion of the Jews from Venice. Luzzatto employed the humanist language of reason of state, while Menasseh’s writings were all exegetical in nature prior to 1655. How did Menasseh, a messianist whose writings focused on explaining Jewish thought, who had shown no interest in humanist political discourse, come to employ the humanist ideas of reason of state popular in the mid-seventeenth century? Furthermore, Luzzatto’s petition is a meek request to allow Jews to continue to reside in the Venetian ghetto, while Menasseh addresses Cromwell as an ambassador of one nation to the leader of another boldly requesting to be admitted to England without disabilities. How can we explain this dramatic change in tone? This paper traces the links, as well as the crucial differences, between these two petitions by examining several other petitions on behalf of Atlantic Jewry as well as the international developments in the intervening period. This paper argues that these factors were critical in the development of Menasseh’s thought as well as his choice of language and tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the long-term trajectory and the recent acceleration of the conflict over the rule of law in the EU. It focusses on the motivation of the two governments in Hungary and Poland to challenge European core values increasingly aggressively even directly at EU level despite the threat of significant material costs to both countries. Putting forward a Gramscian understanding, we argue that this radicalization is the result of a counter-hegemonic strategy that aims at replacing the liberal order with a new, nationalist, ultraconservative, Christian order on domestic and European levels. The paper traces core elements of this strategy which are either disputed or underestimated in existing literature, most importantly the pursuit of a core ideology and the massive and long-term investment into winning moral and cultural leadership through the penetration of civil society which precedes and complements electoral strategies and autocratic institution building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the post-9/11 event has animated how state actors frame terrorism, contemporary studies have failed to address the politics inherent in proscribing, repressing, and labeling separatist movements as terrorists. This paper explores the politics of framing terrorism using the contemporary self-determination struggles advanced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Yoruba Nation's freedom frontiers. The study proposes a United Nations-coordinated global framework for regulating and evaluating states' activities in identifying specific groups as terrorists. Taking such a stance would prevent aggrieved agitators from being persecuted by the state in the name of terror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent can hostility toward Greeks in Turkish politics be explained sociologically? This paper provides a fresh perspective by examining the value of group position theory in understanding negative perceptions of Greeks in Turkish politics between 1946 and 1960. It proposes that Turkish politicians' perceived threats to valued resources played a key role in their unfavorable portrayals of Greeks. To test the argument, the study scrutinizes all Turkish parliamentary speeches in this period that contain the word Greek (N = 652). Quantitative analysis demonstrates that speaking about border-related threats is a significant predictor of negative perceptions. Qualitative investigation details how politicians justified their negative comments. The paper concludes that the negative remarks about Greeks are a function of Turkish politicians' perceived threats to valued resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue focusing on the intricacies of Turkey's party system and the evolution of Turkish party competition amid democratic challenges. The introduction provides a brief overview of each paper in this special issue, which delves into the relationship between economic factors and voter behavior, offering insights into the continued dominance of the ruling party. While doing so, the special issue specifically examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the politics of engagement in environmental games from a political theatre theory perspective. Specifically, I focus on digital environmental games developed with classrooms in mind, and examine player interaction as politicized through the lens of Boalian theatre. To this end, I overview gaming as an intervention tool in the form of serious, environmental games. Next, I introduce the poetics of Boal's TO, and connect its aim to restore theatre as a popular form of conversation and discussion to the aspiration of digital environmental games to develop an eco-friendly outlook. I build upon a rule-based approach to computer game rhetoric, and analyze how environmental games use rules as a rhetorical tool to create a pro-environmental statement. Lastly, I suggest that players in environmental games are not mere game players but rather 'spect-actors'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to theorize the role of transdisciplinarity in politics. I do this by arguing for an ontological pluralism, using the ideas of Basarab Nicolescu, suggesting a political view can equate to a layer of reality. Nicolescu's thought indicates that we should think beyond and transcend the political spectrum- a political view is not just a view but an actual part of reality. Next, I use 'Mode 2' Science to suggest we should adopt a distributed epistemology which sees everyone as bearers of knowledge, I suggest that politics should take this into consideration. This fits with the pluralism indicated by Nicolescu. Furthermore, I suggest 'Mode 2' Science also says that institutions should be permeable- the difference between state, science and society should not be seen as solid. Institutions should also be seen as transitory in nature. Next, I argue Edgar Morin's complex thinking indicates how we should gather knowledge and how society should be governed. Particularly, it shows that governance should consist of teams, in which the state acts as a catalyst for bringing a wide group of people together. These 'teams' and the state can be activated or deactivated depending on the situation, therefore preventing an accumulation of power, while also allowing effective governance if required. Finally, I use complex network theory to characterize how the pertinent temporary configurations of relations would work and the factors that might affect them. Using network theory allows us to conceptualize these relations as dynamic, connected, vulnerable, clustered and yet also having a few figures (in this case the state) that can connect people. Following all of this, we come to a new pluralistic, egalitarian, transitory, but most of all transdisciplinary view of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the politics of machine translation. It contributes to 'reprogramming' Translation Studies as a discipline capable of dealing with the challenges posed by the socio-technological transformation often referred to as 'digitization.' It starts from the premise that the distinction between human and machine translation cannot be taken for granted and presupposed as unproblematic. Rather, it needs to be made an object of empirical investigation. The distinction between human and machine translation is not only part of the analytical vocabulary of Translation Studies. It is also part of the practical vocabulary of the social world: It is made by all kinds of social agents in all kinds of social situations and with all kinds of social meanings. These meanings, this paper suggests, can be considered political when the human/machine distinction becomes entangled with (antagonistic) us/them-distinctions – when the fact that a machine is doing the translating instead of a human becomes politically meaningful. By drawing on a series of examples, this paper demonstrates the analytical fruitfulness of such an approach and the multidimensionality of the politics of machine translation. It closes with a number of remarks on the 'anthropolitics' of Translation Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writing by Latin American feminists offers a unique political philosophy based on a novel and transformative analysis of the relationship between capitalism, coloniality, patriarchy, and terracide. Focusing on the work of Rita Segato, Julieta Paredes, Lélia Gonzalez, Raquel Gutiérrez-Aguilar, and Moira Millán, this paper introduces the term "Rooted-South feminism" and outlines its epistemic-rationality. I first show how these thinkers root their epistemological frame in the collective struggle of racialized women. Through this account I then make explicit the relational political ontology that grounds their thinking, paradigmatically expressed in the notions of "territory-body-land" and "terracide." In describing how patriarchy functions as a system of domination that desensitises subjects to the suffering of the Other, I argue that Rooted-South feminists expose the structural relationship between capitalism, coloniality, violence against women, and the destruction of the Earth. Here, the feminine is conceived as a social function produced throughout the long histories of women. This "politics in a feminine key" uniquely understands the sphere of reproduction not simply as a vector of domination, but as the foundation for the liberation and regeneration of life in its totality. Rooted-South feminists propose an authentic historical pluralism engaged in the co-construction of an inhabited earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the consequences of the necropolitical border regime on border crossers' lives on the Greek island of Lesvos. It focuses on the manifold abandonments (left-to-die practices) that border crossers experience inside and beyond the refugee camps and detention centres, arguing that this inhuman and degrading treatment inflicts, normalises and naturalises disposability, humiliation, and social death. The paper combines a social harm approach, critical migration and border studies, and insights from anthropology to analyse border crossers' lived experiences of violence. In doing so, the paper contributes to the growing literature on the politics of abandonment and disposability as a modus operandi of migration governance. It also expands on social harm typologies by introducing a new conceptual category of harm which I term 'necroharms'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that public addresses of heads of state are critical for public health policy during pandemics. Drawing insights from studies that investigate metaphors and frames in political and public health discourses, it explores how the Philippine government, especially President Rodrigo Duterte, framed COVID-19. In doing so, it hopes to broaden the understanding of how political rhetoric may be constitutive of public health policy. The analysis of the public addresses entailed three interrelated levels: (1) a description of broad historical, social, political, and cultural contexts of public addresses under investigation, (2) an explanation of the communicative situation including the production and consumption of these addresses—processes that mediate between the text and context, and (3) a textual analysis, which substantiates how the discursive patterns are realized through the president's rhetorical choices. Our analysis reveals that the president consistently deployed the rhetorical strategies of (1) enemization, (2) legitimization of the incumbent administration, and (3) dismissal of critics. The configuration of these strategies sustains a binaristic discourse structure that lays blame on a political other while the government asserts its legitimacy during a public health crisis. These rhetorical strategies organize support for public health policy by a populist administration to manage COVID-19. Implications of political rhetoric to public health and risk communication are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at two memorials built in India to commemorate Sikh victims of the violent events of June 1984 and November 1984. Gurdwara Yaadgaar Shaheedan (Gurdwara Martyrs' Memorial) was built in the Golden Temple complex, Amritsar in 2013, and the Wall of Truth: Sikh Genocide Memorial was inaugurated in Gurdwara Rakabganj, New Delhi in 2017. While both memorials commemorate related events and are built by the same group of people, they differ completely in the choice of nomenclature, design and even the justification given for their creation. This paper discusses the differences between these memorials and their relevance in the memorial politics of contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concepts of social visibility and invisibility in the context of social justice and political participation. It discusses how social and political philosophers, such as Axel Honneth, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Rancière, view visibility and invisibility as critical lenses through which to understand oppression, exclusion, and emancipatory change. The article also highlights the ambivalent nature of visibility, which can both empower and sustain problematic social dynamics. The papers in this special issue address questions about how individuals and groups achieve social visibility or remain invisible, and how democratic societies can challenge and diversify prevailing modes of perception. The hope is that these discussions will contribute to a nuanced understanding of the relationship between visibility, social justice, and transformative action. [Extracted from the article]

By analysing debates between member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) over health inequities experienced by sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) from 2013 through to 2015 and 2016, this paper interrogates a WHO decision to 'do nothing', and the relationship between this decision and the production of ignorance and non-knowledge. This paper problematises state representatives' discursive practices regarding the lack of evidence on SGM health inequalities, drawing on the sociology of ignorance. Informed by the sociology of nothing, two analytical categories – non-recognition (omissive) and mis-recognition (commissive) of SGM communities – are proposed to critically understand the production of 'no-bodies' and the tolerance of the lack of evidence. The lack of evidence, rather than prompting WHO action, was used as a rationale for intentionally neglecting the health concerns of particular social groups due to their invisibility in health research. Therefore, the paper argues that the lack of evidence in itself is symptomatic of the existence of SGM health inequities, which require the WHO to take action such as formally expressing concerns about and endorsing research on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, Social Work Teaching Partnerships launched into a turbulent political and policy arena where a repositioning of social work education was taking place alongside the adoption of neoliberal ideologies promoting the operation of market forces within higher education nationally and globally. This paper presents findings from 11 respondents to an online survey undertaken in England to explore factors that support and hinder partnership working between universities in Social Work Teaching Partnerships. Findings suggest some merit to partnership working, with closer working relationships in practice education, student placements and research. Data suggest that some Social Work Teaching Partnerships were able to form collegiate relationships despite the competitive positioning of universities. However, respondents also commented on operational barriers, such as communication problems and size of Social Work Teaching Partnerships that created difficulties for collaboration. Tensions resulting from working in a competitive market driven environment clearly emerged from the data with some partnerships not able to engage fully in collaborative working as a result. This paper reflects on how the broader political and policy context influences the operationalisation of partnership working within Social Work Teaching Partnerships and suggests key avenues to explore further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone are enacting biological citizenship to effect responsive and accountable engagement with their government. Disaster survivors are often left without avenues to hold policymakers accountable, but, recently, injured or disabled people have taken legal action against their governments over issues such as negligence, delays, damaged property, and death. However, in Sierra Leone, members of the Ebola survivors' association have sued the government at the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice over a less conventional issue: corruption. After audit reports uncovered instances of financial impropriety that compromised the country's response to the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak, two plaintiffs sued the government with the argument that corruption and the failure of the government to hold the culprits accountable constitute abuses of the rights to life and health of those affected by the disaster, and the entire population. Based on this case, the paper argues that the lawsuit is an attempt to redefine corruption as a health hazard and a human rights violation. This challenges authorities to give serious attention to how financial improprieties affect the ability of state agencies to guarantee equitable, dignified healthcare, and to take the post-disaster rehabilitation of survivors as a critical component of reconstruction programmes. Ultimately, the lawsuit might set a precedent for other disaster survivors to demand equitable and dignified access to health and proper rehabilitation. This paper draws on scholarly literature, official documents, and conversations with some of the survivors and their lawyer to make this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the legacy of Václav Havel in regard to civil disobedience and dissident action. The paper frames its analysis on the long-standing debate Havel undertook with the Czech author Milan Kundera. Ultimately the paper argues that the nuance to Havel's optimism, as it emerges against Kundera's more pessimistic position, regarding dissident action is a timely and important response with great value for contemporary global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is foundational to the way we see, feel, read, interpret and 'write' the landscapes; nevertheless, the learning processes behind these actions are not always explicit and subject to scrutiny. This short editorial, while presenting the six papers that compose this special issue on Landscape and Education, underlines the need of combining interdisciplinary viewpoints towards a greater understanding of the issues of power, access, participation and justice that are incorporated in landscape pedagogies. Being in a university context or within collaborative projects addressing citizens and students, as the papers in this issue reveal, the landscape can always be considered as an emancipatory tool and not merely as an object of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several political and academic arenas have been turning their focus to the seas. In the EU, the need to govern and plan sustainable uses of the seas has primarily been expressed through the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD). This paper analyses the different sea worlds as well as conceptualizations of the sea, expressed by recreationists on one hand, who experience the sea in terms of connections and as unbounded and alive, and the marine management documents on the other, where the sea is portrayed as a passive utility in need of organization. It argues that using particular frameworks, the process of sea governance provides grounds for cognitive inequality. The paper contributes to ontological politics by empirically portraying how the 'protected sea' mingles with sea realities, such as 'free seas', and '(un)safe seas', whereas the latter two are underrepresented in the policy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the UK a polarised and politicised discourse exists that attempts to pitch transgender identities in opposition to discourses on sexual orientations. This suggests that interventions assisting clients in their understanding of one, would be detrimental on exploration of the other i.e., to be affirming of gender identity is to cause conversion of sexuality and vice versa. This paper attempts to address some of the problems with this oppositional critique and solve some of the practical problems that the theorist and/or clinician may encounter while attempting to help their clients within the realm of psychological therapies. It does so through Deleuzian ontologies of difference, coupled with Bhaskarian critical realism. We aim to present a (re)consideration of the biopsychosocial model of Health. The recent publication of the International Classification of Diseases 11th Edition and its reclassification of trans aetiology as a Disorder of Sexual Development has presented a conceptual shift from gender dysphoria towards a gender incongruence model (WHO 2022). The aim of this article therefore is to develop practice by enhancing the conceptual toolbox of the clinician and therapist working with Gender Sex and Relationship Diversities (GSRD). Thereby enabling them to better approach a wider diversity of clients safely. This paper explores current conversations and ideas around the phenomenon of trans gender identities and minority orientations. It aims to present an ethical model which can inform the clinical practice of therapists and is underpinned by a critical realist interpretation of biological, psychological and sociological aspects of the mind and body. Overall, the paper acts as a call to action against conversion practices which aim to position trans experience and sexual attraction in opposition to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses embodied geographies of power assisted devices (powered wheelchairs and motorised scooters) for disabled people in Australia to augment understandings of mobile disability politics. Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'lines' is used to reimagine spatial thinking about mobile disability politics. Disability in this paper is understood as an emplaced, emergent, relational and embodied process that arises in the interaction between ideas, materials and bodies. A focus on the shifting affective capacities of everyday journeys can deepen an understanding of mobile disability politics through attention to sensations. To illustrate the notion of lines we draw on three 'portraits' from a qualitative project on power assisted devices in Ballina Shire, New South Wales, Australia. Each portrait provides an illustration of how mobility experiences of power assisted devices may reinforce and/or challenge normative ideologies and identities, alongside deepening understandings of how ideas and materials come together to produce enabling and/or exclusionary arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at assessing whether party organizational profiles and policy issue saliency converged in 7 European democracies (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK), from the 1970s to the 2010s. Building on the theoretical premises of the cartel party thesis and historical new-institutionalism, the paper argues that general tendencies in party policy issue saliency and organizational evolution driven by contextual factors have been taken for granted by party literature based on ideal-typical models. We maintain that party convergence is mainly associated to higher levels of socialization to government. Our empirical analysis shows that patterns of cross-country convergence among parties actually emerge concerning the saliency of the issues placed on the classical left-right divide, as well as party resources, while higher variance characterizes all the other organizational dimensions and post-materialist/value-based policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how spatial judgments impacted planning and policy-making by studying how stakeholders on Cape Cod, Massachusetts considered cross-scale relationships between local, regional, and state jurisdictions and hydro-geologically defined watersheds. Analysis of video data from participatory planning workshops illustrates how these judgments were made as stakeholders developed a regional wastewater management plan. Detailed analysis of their deliberations illustrates the complex and dynamic nature of their scalar judgements as they addressed mismatches between watersheds and towns. Findings illustrate how their judgments were part of the process that led to the development of innovative policy tools for collective action that embraced, rather than erased, mismatches. This paper also demonstrates the application of spatial judgments of non-expert stakeholders as they made plans and proposed actions for a complex social-ecological system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]