Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

After the Nicaraguan Non‐Payment Crisis: Alternatives to Microfinance Narcissism

This article argues against ‘microfinance narcissism’ and calls for a re‐politicization of the microfinance paradigm. The dominant verdict on microcredit has undergone a damning transformation, from ‘magic bullet for poverty reduction’ to ‘cause of suicide’. Nowadays, both radical critics and mainstream voices deplore microcredit's negative impact on micro‐entrepreneurs. They argue for a reorientation where credit is targeted at established small and medium‐sized enterprises, particularly in rural areas. The crisis in microfinance worldwide, including burgeoning protests, are viewed as proof of the commercial derailment and/or misplaced faith in microfinance's positive social and economic impact on the poor. This article engages with this debate through a study of the Nicaraguan micro‐finance crisis. It challenges existing analyses that pin the crisis on agricultural over‐indebtedness, lack of due diligence, or Sandinista populist politics. Illustrating the dangers of neglecting the diverse nature of microfinance, it reveals the paradoxical outcomes of the crisis: a refocus on the urban at the expense of agricultural credit for small and medium enterprises and a consolidation of the power of national processing elites. Nicaragua's Non‐Payment Movement is also shown to be both a product of elite manipulation and an expression of legitimate resistance to an industry that turns a blind eye to the manner in which markets and politics constrain clients’ potential.     

LETTER WRITING AND ELITE IDENTITY IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1770–1850

This essay argues that correspondence was an important means for the Dutch elite in the period 1770–1850 to develop, consolidate and express an elite identity. Children were taught a “natural” epistolary style, which often meant “decent” or “as fits an elite child”. In line with Bourdieu's thesis that elites are so confident of their leading position that they feel free to deviate from language norms, adolescents diverged from decent language, whereas lower‐class correspondents composed humble letters to their superiors. Daily correspondence and ceremonial letters served to keep upper‐class values in mind and to hold the elite together.     

Voices from the Top of the Pile: Elite Perceptions of Poverty and the Poor in the Philippines

How do elites perceive poverty and the poor? In this article, we present the results of interviews with eighty members of the Filipino elite, undertaken as part of a larger six‐country study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor. Poverty, we argue, is a highly subjective phenomenon. People's perceptions of poverty, of who is and who is not poor, of how poverty affects them and others, and of how poverty can be effectively tackled, vary enormously between different types of people (defined in terms of class, status, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, gender or a myriad of other social identities). Wherever people cohere as groups, classes or other social constructs, perceptions of poverty are aggregated and refined and then embedded in social dynamics. The study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor, we conclude, can both add to our understanding of the social dynamics of poverty and inequality and inform pro‐poor public policy.     

Linking land displacement and environmental dispossession to Mi'kmaw health and well‐being: Culturally relevant place‐based interpretive frameworks matter

For over five decades, Pictou Landing First Nation, a small Mi'kmaw community on the northern shore of Nova Scotia, has been told that the health of its community is not impacted by a pulp and paper mill pouring 85 million litres of effluent per day into a lagoon that was once a culturally significant place known as “A'se'k,” and which borders the community. Based on lived experience, the community knows otherwise. Despite countless government‐ and industry‐sponsored studies indicating the mill's pollutants are merely “nuisance” impacts and harmless, the community's concerns have not gone away. Using a “Piktukowaq” (Mi'kmaw) environmental health research framework to guide the interpretation of oral histories coming from the Knowledge Holders in Pictou Landing First Nation, we convey the deep, health‐enhancing relationship with A'se'k that the Piktukowaq enjoyed before it was destroyed, and the health suppression that has occurred since then. Conducting the research using a culturally relevant place‐based interpretive framework has demonstrated the absolute necessity of this kind of approach where Indigenous communities are concerned, particularly those facing health impacts vis‐à‐vis land displacement and environmental dispossession.     

Post‐totalitarian national identity: public memory in Germany and Russia

Through a comparative analysis of Germany and Russia, this paper explores how participation in the memorialization process affects and reflects national identity formation in post‐totalitarian societies. These post‐totalitarian societies face the common problem of re‐presenting their national character as civic and democratic, in great part because their national identities were closely bound to oppressive regimes. Through a comparison of three memorial sites—Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in Germany, and Lubianka Square and the Park of Arts in Russia—we argue that even where dramatic reductions in state power and the opening of civil society have occurred, a simple elite–public dichotomy cannot adequately capture the nature of participation in the process of memory re‐formation. Rather, mutual interactions among multiple publics and elites, differing in kind and intensity across contexts, combine to form a complex pastiche of public memory that both interprets a nation's past and suggests desirable models for its future. The domination of a ‘Western’ style of memorialization in former East Germany illustrates how even relatively open debates can lead to the exclusion of certain representations of the nation. Nonetheless, Germany has had comparatively vigorous public debates about memorializing its totalitarian periods. In contrast, Russian elite groups have typically circumvented or manipulated participation in the memorialization process, reflecting both a reluctance to deal with Russia's totalitarian past and a emerging national identity less civic and democratic than in Germany.     

Between Survival and Revolution: Another Community Development System is Possible

Abstract: The tensions between capitalism and community have created a situation where, from the depths of multinational corporate headquarters to the diverse urban streets of America, the latter is now being co‐opted by the former. Couple this with the current neoliberal order being imposed on the world by multilateral institutions, high‐ranking government officials, and the corporate elite, and you have an economic imperial agenda being carried out in all corners of the globe. In this article, I take a dialectical and investigative approach in critiquing the neoliberal ideology that dictates how the work of community development corporations is funded and controlled. Much of today's reality within community development consists of an environment where funding restrictions undermine community power, community development trumps community organizing, professionalization creates a disconnect between community development staff and community members, and competition for funding forces organizations to spend more time on funders' needs than the needs of the communities they serve. J P Morgan Chase is profiled to illustrate how economic neoliberal globalization and so‐called community capitalism shape the modern community development movement. I conclude with an analysis of how empowerment, organizational democracy, and collective ownership have the potential to open up spaces of hope for urban communities in the United States who have been forced to live under the hegemony of economic neoliberal globalization.     

Claiming the nation for the people: the dynamics of representation in German public discourse about immigrant integration

Against the backdrop of the current trend to criticise elite‐centred approaches to the study of nationalism, this article sheds light on ways in which elite and popular notions of nationhood are mediated. Thus, public discourse on national identity is explored as a discourse that ordinary people can influence and in which elites make claims to represent the people. To illustrate the dynamics of representative claim‐making and reception, the article uses a case study from German public discourse; the debate about Thilo Sarrazin's 2010 book Germany Does Away With Itself. It finds that, although Sarrazin clearly breaches well‐established rules in national identity discourse, his ideas gain traction from the moment he becomes accepted as representing ordinary Germans. The findings are discussed against the backdrop of the history of German national identity discourse and anti‐essentialist approaches treating nationhood as a political claim.     

Community,Connection and Conservation: Intangible Cultural Values in Natural Heritage—the Case of Shirakami‐sanchi World Heritage Area

Intangible cultural heritage, according to a UNESCO definition, is ‘the practices, representations, expressions as well as the knowledge and skills that communities, groups and in some cases individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage’. Using a case study of Shirakami‐sanchi World Heritage Area, this paper illustrates how the local community's conservation commitment was formed through their long‐term everyday interactions with nature. Such connectivity is vital to maintaining the authentic integrity of a place that does not exclude humans. An examination of the formation of the community's conservation commitment for Shirakami reveals that it is the community's spiritual connection and place‐based identity that have supported conservation, leading to the World Heritage nomination, and it is argued that the recognition of such intangible cultural heritage is vital in conservation. The challenge, then, is how to communicate such spiritual heritage today. Forms of community involvement are discussed in an attempt to answer this question.     

Unstable stability: Turkish politics at the crossroads?

The Justice and Development Party has been in power in Turkey since 2002 after a sweeping victory. The party has since implemented a successful economic stabilization programme and led the country into membership negotiations with the European Union. The educated modern‐urban segments of the population, however, continue to harbour suspicion that the government party has a secret agenda of turning Turkey into an Islamic state. Although the evidence for such a fear is not fully convincing, it can be understood within the broader framework of Turkish modernization which was carried out by a highly centralized state in the cultural‐educational domain in an uncompromising fashion, generating a social bifurcation between the moderns and the traditionalists. After the transition to competitive politics, elected politicians worked to curb the power of the state elites that have been the exponents of modernization policies. Supported also by economic development that has expanded society's power against the state, the political elites have worked to expand their scope for decision‐making. Such redistribution of power in society has been problematical and has twice resulted in military interventions. The shift in the balance of power in favour of the political (elected) elite is nearing completion. The struggle is currently centered on the election of a new president by the parliament in May 2007 because historically the presidency has been seen as a position that counterbalances the preferences of the political elite by those of the state elite. Although likely to cause perturbations, the president will be elected by the Justice and Development Party. Consolidation of Turkey's democracy is continuing.     

Nationalism,ethnic conflict,and job competition: non‐Russian collective action in the USSR under perestroika†

ABSTRACT. The article examines the effects of job competition on ethnic relations within a multinational state. It argues that demographic increase leads to competition for blue‐collar jobs while an increase in the number of graduates from higher education leads to competition over elite jobs. In the first case, people risk unemployment, in the second, blocked career opportunities. Mass‐level unemployment may lead to anger‐driven mass riots, while an intelligentsia will formulate more rational strategies to eliminate threatening competitors from the labour market. One such strategy is to insist that the state ought to be a national state, in which the national elites will be in control. While questions of identity no doubt also may have an enormously mobilising power in times of national resurgence, identity issues are normally intimately intertwined with interest politics. These mechanisms are traced in the history of ethnic mobilisation in the Soviet Union and the post‐Soviet states during and after perestroika.     

Muslims' nation‐building process in socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1960s

During the 1960s, the Yugoslav Socialist authorities gradually recognised Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslims as a nation. Interestingly, in the 1940s, the Yugoslav Communist leaders refused to consider Muslims even as an ethnic group and saw them only as a religious community whose members had to designate themselves as Serbs or Croats. Why did the regime decide to recognise Muslims as a nation in the 1960s, whereas 20 years earlier they supported the opposite position? To understand the shift, this nation‐building process must be understood as the result of a dual dynamic on the federal and the republican level, where important changes occurred. At the federal one, the Communist authorities initiated a decentralisation process within the context of Yugoslav self‐management in the 1950s, which significantly reinforced the republic elites. This coincided with the resurgence of the national question in the whole of Yugoslavia. Simultaneously, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a new elite progressively rose to power in the 1960s and put the ‘Muslim question’ on the political agenda. This led to the gradual increase in status of the Muslims from a religious community to an ethnic group at the beginning of the 1960s and then to a nation at the end of the decade.     

The Evolution of Neoliberal Urbanism in Moscow, 1992–2015

This article examines the urban development of Moscow from 1992 to 2015, arguing that the city's recent transformation from grey asphalt jungle to a “city comfortable for life” is driven by a process of neoliberal restructuring. In particular, the study finds that a set of multi‐scalar dynamics—namely, the global financial crisis, the rise of a local protest movement, and an intensified rivalry between federal and Muscovite elites—were the key driving forces behind Moscow's current evolution. The work advances a conceptual framework of neoliberal urbanisation that enhances the literature on post‐socialist cities and, more generally, the broader debate on actually existing neoliberalism.     

The birth of a united Europe: on why the EU has generated a ‘non‐emotional’ identity

ABSTRACT. In several respects, the European Union (EU) represents both a novel system of quasi‐supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a relatively fragile construction: it remains a community still in the making with an incipient sense of identity, within which powerful forces are at work. This article has three main aims. Firstly, to analyse the reasons and key ideas that prompted a selected elite to construct a set of institutions and treaties destined to unite European nations in such a way that the mere idea of a ‘civil war’ among them would become impossible. Secondly, to examine the specific top‐down processes that led to the emergence of a united Europe and the subsequent emergence of the EU, thus emphasising the constant distance between the elites and the masses in the development of the European project. Finally, to explain why the EU has generated what I call a ‘non‐emotional’ identity, radically different from the emotionally charged and still prevailing national identities present in its member states.     

A Review of “Never Enough”

Abstract

Three of Alasdair MacIntyre's published essays help to illuminate his critique of modern liberal individualism Liberalism, in the name of freedom, inculcates indifference to the developmental social needs of human agents, denies the ties that bind members of society to the common good, and prevents political communities from pursuing common goods effectively. Rather than freeing individuals for self-government, liberalism leaves the government of the community's goods to unacknowledged elites. Liberation demands self-government and self-government requires the virtues, which are formed, in part, through the community's shared pursuit of common goods.     

'International community' after Iraq

One frequently hears statements about the damage done to the 'international community' by disagreements about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is clear from the general nature and frequency of its use that the term 'inter‐national community' has an important political function in generating legiti‐macy for those who act in its name. It is also clear from its popular usage that 'international community' means very different, and often quite opposed, things to different people. Why is the strong term 'community' chosen when 'inter‐national society' might be more useful? Longstanding debates within political theory and the English school provide helpful insights into why people use this term in the ways that they do. This article will argue that international community implies a deep and robust sharing of identity, and that in relation to the Iraq war, the most important meaning of it equates broadly with the West. The authors look at the effect of the war on the western international com‐munity through its impact on NATO, the EU, the UN, the WTO and public opinion. They further argue that the evidence from these sources does not yet suggest that the western international community has been fatally damaged.     

Revolution and elite transformation in Eastern Europe

The external and internal causes, elite‐mass dynamics, and elite‐level changes that appear, respectively, to have preceded, accompanied, and followed the revolutionary upheavals in Eastern Europe between 1989–1991 are examined comparatively. Particular attention is paid to the possible emergence of national elites that share a consensus on rules of the game and that are unified in defence of democratic institutions. Prospects for such elites are judged to be best in Poland and Hungary, less good in Czechoslovakia, poor in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, and virtually nonexistent in the Yugoslav republics.     

The European Union as a Gated Community: The Two‐faced Border and Immigration Regime of the EU

Abstract: Within the European Union, an internal liberalisation of cross‐border labour mobility for EU citizens is currently being combined with the tightening of control and management efforts at the external borders. At the same time, attempts are being made to strategically select immigrants from new member states as well as from outside the EU who will be of economic value. In this paper we argue that by implementing such protectionist and selective immigration policy, the EU has come to resemble a gated community in which the bio‐political control and management of immigration is, to a large extent, the product of fear. Often fear manifests itself in terms of fear of losing material gain, eg the anxiety of losing economic welfare or public security. More often, however, this fear relates to the entrance of the immigrant, the stranger and is, as such, associated with a fear of losing a community's self‐defined identity. These perceived threats to a community's comfort lead to the politicisation of protection, whereby the terra incognita beyond the border is justifiably neglected due to the indifference and the intentional blindness shown to the outside. Hiding in a gated community in order to protect this comfort zone and trying to exclude outsiders, ‘Others’, from the community, is not only in vain since the desire for completion of the Self can never be fulfilled, but what remains still more troublesome, is that this tendency will sustain and reproduce global inequality and segregation, both in the material as well as symbolic sense.     

Crossing the Border from Slavery to Freedom: The Building of a Community at Buxton,Upper Canada

In November 1849, the first settlers arrived at what was to become the Buxton Settlement, the most successful all-black community established in Canada prior to the U.S. Civil War. A community soon had been established, a community based on freedom and hope for the future. In the late 1850s, Buxton's population reached close to 700 inhabitants. Three schools and four churches of differing denominations served the community's needs. Several graduates from Buxton's schools attended various colleges to study law, medicine, or for the ministry. A lumber mill and brick-making facility promoted community industry. The settlement boasted a two-story brick hotel, a general store, and a post office. Buxton's rich history lends itself to the study of several topics vital to the social history of both Canada and the United States, particularly the development and strength of a true community: Buxton became an interactive community based on self-reliance and independency.     

Deserving to Whom? Investigating Heterogeneity in the Impact of Social Constructions of Target Populations on Support for Affirmative Action

The social construction of target populations has emerged as an influential framework for understanding the public policy process. In particular, target populations have been shown to shape the allocation of benefits and burdens by political elites. However, existing studies focus on the elite level, which overlooks whether public preferences are aligned with the allocation of policy benefits and burdens by political elites. Moreover, many studies treat social constructions as homogenous, which this paper calls into question. Using a nation‐wide survey experiment, I investigate variation in public support for affirmative action policies with randomly assigned target populations. The findings indicate that the public formulates policy preferences on the basis of perceived deservingness of target groups similar to political elites. In addition, the findings uncover heterogeneity in the effect of targeting on public opinion based on ideology and racial/ethnic group identity.