Post‐political planning and community opposition: asserting and challenging consensus in planning urban regeneration in Newcastle,New South Wales

This paper examines recent urban regeneration plans for inner city Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia. The focus is on recent plans to rejuvenate the historical commercial centre of the city—the Hunter Street Mall. Recent plans for the city are positioned as post‐political efforts by planning and development agents to limit antagonistic politics and secure consensus around a future planning vision. Core to this new vision is high‐rise development. Formal and technocratic consultation processes are central to efforts to secure consensus and limit conflict. Yet, conflict nevertheless arises as local residents, community groups, and politicians oppose the planning vision pursued by planning and development agents. Debates about the need for regeneration and the form of regeneration surface as central points of contest. Likewise, the material configuration of the city and wider political context frame both post‐political planning efforts and oppositional politics. The paper contributes to a growing body of work by scholars who question the presence of a dominant, overarching post‐political condition. Rather, post‐political efforts emerge as contextual and fluid processes to secure the planning and development objectives of urban elites. As the case study illustrates, such post‐political efforts are rarely unchallenged, as contest and antagonistic politics emerge, allowing citizens to resist the efforts of state and development actors and help shape their cities.     

Radical (Evangelical) Democracy: The Dreams and Nightmares of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Antonio Negri

Abstract

This essay critically examines the theories of radical democracy offered by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of the beloved community and Antonio Negri's vision of the multitude. The radical democratic visions of King and Negri continue to critically inform progressive reflections on democratic theory and propel new dreams of democracy. Despite their similarities, the differences between Negri and King are substantial. I argue that Negri's dream of the multitude and King's dream of beloved community have been shaped by different conceptions of radical democracy. While Negri works out of a tradition of Italian Marxism, King works within a critical tradition of prophetic evangelicalism. Thus, the political task, according to King, is to translate Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God into a beloved community on earth. King's creative negotiation of transcendence and history provides the requisite theological and political resources to develop a truly transcendent and immanent vision of a radical democratic society that is attentive to the demands and dignity of "all God's children."     

Acclamations: a theological-political topic in the crossed dialogue between Erik Peterson,Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Carl Schmitt*

The dual character of acclamations, religious and political, makes of acclamations a perfect place to explore theological-political transferences. Acclamations were central in ancient times in order to constitute a community and to show its acceptance, whether they took place in a republic while deciding in assemblies or during the accession of an emperor. The Christian-Church adopted this imperial ceremonial style with the introduction of imperial laudes into the Church and accommodated it to its own needs. Modern times recovered the magic of acclamations in order to give space to the vox populi in the constitution of the political community. The aim of the present article is to explore the centrality of acclamations in religious and political life through three key texts: Kantorowicz’s Laudes regiae, Peterson’s Heis Theos and Schmitt’s Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren. These texts are interrelated and could be considered a particular case of a broad hidden dialogue between these three authors. The theological-political character and evolution of the practice of acclamations in the West coming from the East shows that the line that divided the sacred from the secular has been always far from fixed, and was instead subject to fluctuation, pressures from every side, and constant renegotiation.     

Reagan's Foreign Policy: An Assessment (I) Introduction

The Western drama High Noon introduces political considerations deeper than the maelstrom of American anticommunism of the 1950s against which it is most often viewed. It presents the central problems of modern political obligation as arising out of an encounter between Aristotelian and Lockean ideas about marriage, friendship, consent and coercion, and religious obligation. The marshal Kane, representing the altered vestige of Aristotelian ideals, desperately seeks help from the Lockean-like community of Hadleyville. The resulting tension lays bare the political ambiguity many find inherent in American political life.     

Strategic planning for multicommunity rural development: Insights from Northern Ireland

This paper examines progress being made in the sphere of community‐led rural development in Northern Ireland. Multicommunity development practice carried out by the authors using a transactive model of strategic planning is reported. This case study is located in the borderlands of Ireland, in an area where contested traditions of culture and political allegiance are deeply rooted. The analysis explores, inter alia, the tensions associated with community group formation, the difficulties in winning consensus and how these problems were addressed, the origin and selection of projects, and the first steps towards implementation. By way of conclusion a number of key issues of arguably wider interest are identified: engaging in strategic planning, supporting multicommunity activity and forging new partnership arrangements.     

Biopolitics meets Terrapolitics: Political Ontologies and Governance in Settler-Colonial Australia

Crises persist in Australian Indigenous affairs because current policy approaches do not address the intersection of Indigenous and European political worlds. This paper responds to this challenge by providing a heuristic device for delineating Settler and Indigenous Australian political ontologies and considering their interaction. It first evokes Settler and Aboriginal ontologies as, respectively, biopolitical (focused through life) and terrapolitical (focused through land). These ideal types help to identify important differences that inform current governance challenges. The paper discusses the entwinement of these traditions as a story of biopolitical dominance wherein Aboriginal people are governed as an ‘included-exclusion’ within the Australian political community. Despite the overall pattern of dominance, this same entwinement offers possibilities for exchange between biopolitics and terrapolitics and, hence, for breaking the recurrent crises of Indigenous affairs.     

The English Patient and the Italian Risorgimento: Medical Tourism and the Body Politic in Giovanni Ruffini's Doctor Antonio (1855)

Doctor Antonio (1855), Giovanni Ruffini's novel of therapeutic travel, cross-cultural love and Risorgimento propaganda, pairs an English patient's quest for renewed health in Italy in the 1840s with the concurrent resurgence of the Italian nation through political action. An Italian revolutionary activist turned man of English letters, Ruffini wrote seven novels in English, of which the second, Doctor Antonio, was his greatest critical and popular success. Employing the popular Victorian practice of recuperative travel as a key plot device, and using this device to convey Italian political messages to nineteenth-century English readers, the novel offers a context-specific variation of the rhetorical tradition of representing the ‘body politic’ as a site of health, disease and medical management. This essay investigates Doctor Antonio's relation to Anglo-Italian literary, political and medical contexts in the mid-nineteenth century. More specifically, it analyses how the novel's medical plot supports Ruffini's aims of challenging negative stereotypes of Italians and advancing the cause of Italian liberalism. A reading of Lucy Davenne's illness and treatment as an allegory for the condition of the ailing, but potentially resurgent, Italian nation is developed and critically reflected upon. The intersection of medical and political frames of meaning in the text is further explored by interpreting the space and community of Lucy's convalescence as the model of an ideal society to which both English and Italians might aspire. Finally, the essay considers the novel's material impact on the development of medical tourism in northern Italy, and the political significance of this impact.     

Conceptualising Gender in a Swedish Context

This article tries to illuminate the political conceptualisation of gender in twentieth-century Sweden. It is argued that the notion of gender is partly shaped through a conceptual similarity between an older societal structure with patriarchal principles, marked by a strong gender division of labour, called brukssamhällen (rural industrial communities) and the Swedish welfare state. The local ‘spirit of compromise’ of rural industrial community life survived the industrialisation as an idea, especially the ideas of inclusiveness and the importance of welfare for social cohesion, based on gainful employment. These ideas have also affected the conceptualisation of gender during the twentieth century. This development is brought to light in analyses made by feminist historians, specifically concerning the development of gender relations within the labour movement as well in the general debate.     

After Madison. Public-Spiritedness and Local Political Life

This article examines the themes of political community, race, family, and history in the John Sayles film Lone Star. Although Sayles explicitly states that he is using the film to call into question many of the boundaries that individuals and communities take for granted, the author suggests that the film presents a more complex and more positive view of the place of boundaries in the life of an individual or a community.     

Young Mr. Lincoln in Ford's Theater

In Young Mr. Lincoln, director John Ford and screenwriter Lamar Trotti engage an issue that is central to Ford's films and to Lincoln's political thought. That issue is the tension between individual greatness and the rule of law, a tension heightened in a democracy by the demos's passion for equality. In the film's portrayal of Lincoln, Ford and Trotti suggest a solution to this tension that is fundamentally consistent with the one Lincoln suggested in the Lyceum Address. To remain within the political community, the great man must hold a sincere reverence for the law and be willing to exhibit humility in declaiming his own superiority. In the context of these characteristics, greatness can be a force that preserves the law and protects the community from harm. The film depicts Lincoln as the paradigmatic combination of these characteristics and alludes to his mature leadership based on these commitments in his later career.     

ASEAN as a “Rules-based Community”: Business as Usual

Abstract

In establishing the ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN political elites emphasised their commitment to the rule of law. The definition of the rule of law adopted in the ASEAN Charter mirrored UN reforms that recognised the rule of law as interlinked with democracy and human rights. This commitment raises questions, given the various tactics employed by the grouping’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes to silence dissent. This article critically assesses this apparent shift in regional governance. It first maps the inclusion of rule of law rhetoric in agreements since ASEAN’s foundation, and then examines the form and implementation of dispute settlement mechanisms. It finds that dispute settlement mechanisms have consistently retained the scope for protracted political and bureaucratic negotiation between disputing parties, and “opt out” clauses that enable their contingent application. These findings undermine claims regarding the development of a “rules-based community”, and indicate the continuation of rule by law rather than rule of law. The emphasis placed on ASEAN’s rule of law reforms by elites suggests, then, the rebranding of this political project in support of the ASEAN Economic Community so as to create confidence for investors in the region’s juridical environment.     

The Politics of Zoroastrian Philanthropy and the Case of Qasr-e Firuzeh

In Iran and India religious philanthropy has been a feature of Zoroastrian piety as well as providing the means by which both communities have prospered throughout their respective histories. In Iran an elaborate structure for the regulation of charitable donations was already in place during the Sasanian period and laid the foundation for the laws governing pious foundations, awqāf, after the Islamic conquest. The increased interaction between Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to the expansion of the Tehran Zoroastrian community and the rise of a wealthy merchant class which in turn enabled philanthropic activity to flourish. This development will be discussed here with reference to a particular vaqf, that of the first ārāmgāh or Zoroastrian cemetery to be established in Tehran in the early twentieth century. The case of Qasr-e Firuzeh spans three successive governments in Iran and gives an insight into the management of a charitable endowment within different political contexts.     

Decentralization,the State and Conflicts over Local Boundaries in Northern Ghana

Decentralization projects, such as that initiated by the Rawlings government in Ghana at the end of the 1980s, create a political space in which the relations between local political communities and the state are re‐negotiated. In many cases, the devolution of power intensifies special‐interest politics and political mobilization aiming at securing a ‘larger share of the national cake’, that is, more state funds, infrastructure and posts for the locality. To legitimate their claims vis‐à‐vis the state, civic associations (‘hometown’ unions), traditional rulers and other non‐state institutions often invoke some form of ‘natural’ solidarity, and decentralization projects thus become arenas of debate over the boundaries of community and the relationship between ‘local’ and national citizenship. This article analyses one such debate, in the former Lawra District of Ghana's Upper West Region, where the creation of new districts provoked protracted discussions, among the local political elite as well as the peasants and labour migrants, about the connections between land ownership and political authority, the relations between the local ethnic groups (Dagara and Sisala), and the relevance of ethnic versus territorial criteria in defining local citizenship.     

Immigration, the internet, and spaces of politics

This paper examines the kinds of politics that are enabled by the Internet with respect to immigrants to the United States; its primary concern is whether the political spaces created through the Internet can foster incorporation of immigrants in the political community or whether the political activity on the Internet seems likely to lead to a more fractionalized political community in which the position of immigrants remains marginal. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The analysis of web-sites indicates that there is a great deal of information about immigrants on the Internet, and that most of it seems to be directed to service providers, policy makers, and researchers. There is relatively little discussion by or about immigrants, and beyond a few notable sites, there is almost no sign of mobilization. To the extent that the Internet is used to create new political spaces, it may not be spaces for deliberation and discussion. Rather, the political spaces seem to be informational spaces in which the politics are not easily or directly read.

A-Awda, The Palestine Right to return Coalition, is a broad-based, non-partisan, global, democratic association of grassroots activists and organizational representatives. Our objective is to educate the international community to fulfill its legal and moral obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Al-Awda develops, coordinates, supports and guides, as needed, global and local grassroots initiatives for action related to Palestinian rights. Al-Awda, http://www.al-awda.org as visited 11 July 2002.

“Why I won’t serve Sharon.”

“Maaad Abu-Ghazalah, Arab-American Candidate for US Congress, San Francisco.”

“A Statement on the ‘War on Terror’ from Prominent Americans.”

“What Bush Doesn’t Know about Palestine.”

“Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed.”

Headlines on Café Arabica, http://www.cafearabica.com as visited 11 July, 2002.

The Internet is widely heralded as opening spaces for a wide variety of politics and political voices. But as it is praised for its inclusiveness, it is also pilloried for enabling the fragmentation of political opinion without providing a forum in which common political ground can be identified or consensus achieved. In the former view, the Internet fosters greater inclusion in democratic debate and political community. In the latter view, it contributes to a weakening of the bonds that are necessary for a political community to reach consensus and to provide guidance for democratic governance.Consider the examples in the epigraph to the paper. Al-Awda is a political movement devoted to securing the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their families. It organizes marches and demonstrations in cities across the US and Western Europe. One reason for the apparent mismatch between the locations of the “problem” and of the “action” is that many – though by no means all – of the participants in the marches are immigrants from the Middle East or they are of Arab descent. While the organization is based in Massachusetts, most of the mobilization through it occurs on-line, and it is not clear that there is either a permanent staff or regular meetings, other than the marches. Café Arabica provides a venue for discussion of a wide range of topics related to Arab culture and politics. Much like the romanticized café society, discussion can be lively and seems to include a wide range of participants and viewpoints. Café Arabica includes an on-line discussion forum, again with many of the participants apparently either being from the Middle East or the descendants of immigrants from the region. It labels itself as an Arab-American on-line community.These two web-sites were not chosen at random. They both relate to immigrants – social groups that are often not able to participate in political discussion and debate in their host countries. As such, these sites exemplify both the possibilities and the limitations that commentators have identified when they discuss the Internet and its role in fostering political dialogue. Some people would see these sites as signs of a group that wants to use the political process in one country to influence events in another country. Some people will read these sites as a an indication that at least one immigrant group – if not all immigrants – refuse assimilation, which is the basis of incorporation into the American political community. Still others will view these sites as attempts to incorporate a set of political voices and agents into a more inclusive political community. This paper examines the use of the Internet in political debate and mobilization around immigrants in the United States. It considers the nature of political discussion on the Internet and the agents involved in it. The overarching concern is whether the Internet fosters a more inclusive political community or whether it leads to alternative political spaces that remain unincorporated with respect to the political community of the host society.The paper is organized in four sections. The first provides a background for the debates about immigrants, the Internet, and politics. The second section is an overview of the theoretical debates about the public sphere as a political space in which members of a polity can participate and the ways in which the Internet may transform that space. The third section highlights some of the key issues that condition migrants’ acceptance into a polity, focusing primarily on the United States. With these sections serving as background, the final section of the paper explores political discussion on the Internet by and about immigrants. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The goal in these examinations is to evaluate the extent to which the Internet can provide the basis of a political space in which issues related to the incorporation of immigrants can be debated or whether it is a space that fosters a more fractionalized politics unlikely to lead to greater political incorporation of immigrants.     

Urban community gardens,commons, and social reproduction: revisiting Silvia Federici’s Revolution at Point Zero

Abstract

Revolution at Point Zero gathers together some of the major works written by Silvia Federici from the 1970s through the 2000s. It offers a series of incisive analyses and is replete with insights on identifying lines of effective intervention to overcome capitalist relations, including housework, care work, and the commons. As Federici identifies urban community gardening as an important development in the struggle for the commons, and thereby a postcapitalist future, I briefly discuss two general concerns that suggest caution in making more of urban community gardens than they can deliver politically. One concern is over an uncertain relationship between community, social reproduction, and commons that infuses urban community gardens. The community in the urban community gardens can be reactionary and capitalism-friendly, so that commons may not necessarily come out of such projects. Urban gardening, since it is still largely women’s work, may also impede the collectivisation of social reproduction by adding yet another set of responsibilities expected to be taken up by women. Another regards pollution problems and their under-appreciated political reverberations. Urban gardeners may be exposed to greater concentrations of toxic substances, possibly like farmworkers or miners. These imply highly uneven social consequences, as women, people of colour, and the elderly are the main urban gardeners. The health effects of prolonged exposure could also lead to greater needs for care work, which is also still mostly carried out by women. Finally, gaining, not just enrolling technical expertise on environmental processes will help build more autonomous urban commons.     

Images of Community: Discourse and Strategy in Property Relations

This article argues that divergent images of community result not from inadequate knowledge or confusion of purpose, but from the location of discourse and action in the context of specific struggles and dilemmas. It supports the view that ‘struggles over resources’ are also ‘struggles over meaning’. It demonstrates the ways in which contests over the distribution of property are articulated in terms of competing representations of community at a range of levels and sites. It suggests that, through the exercise of ‘practical political economy’, particular representations of community can be used strategically to strengthen the property claims of potentially disadvantaged groups. In the policy arena, advocates for ‘community based resource management’ have represented communities as sites of consensus and sustain-ability. Though idealized, such representations have provided a vocabulary with which to defend the rights of communities vis-à-vis states. Poor farmers, development planners, consultants and academics can also use representations of community strategically to achieve positive effects, or at least to mitigate negative ones. Most, but not all, of the illustrations in this article are drawn from Indonesia, with special reference to Central Sulawesi.     

Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.     

Good Iranian,Bad Iranian: Representations of Iran and Iranians in Time and Newsweek (1998–2009)

This article analyzes the ways in which Iran and Iranians are represented in Western news media sources. Through detailed textual analysis of articles in Time and Newsweek between 1998 and 2009, it demonstrates that journalistic representations of Iran and Iranians are not simply efforts aimed at describing the real Iran, but rather form the basis of what Said refers to as a powerful “community of interpretation” that often reflects and reproduces certain xenophobic stereotypes of non-Western foreign subjects. While some shifts in Western media representations of Iranians have occurred in the thirty years since the revolution, the underlying ontological assumptions of these representations have remained remarkably durable. That is to say, the dominant representational discourse found in these newsmagazines depicts the political behavior of Iranians on the basis of essentialized notions of Persian and/or Islamic civilization, while very often emphasizing the taken for granted superiority of the West. Earlier Orientalist discourses focus on the difference of non-Western foreign subjects by denigrating them as fundamentally anti-modern and incapable of political, cultural and economic development without Western intervention. This article presents an unmistakable discursive pattern in American journalism whereby certain Iranians are incorporated into Western civilization by virtue of their embrace of a Western modernity.     

Is there a core national doctrine?

National doctrines are notoriously diverse, and often embody contradictory political values and criteria for membership. This article asks whether there is a ‘core’ national doctrine that connects republican, cultural, ethnic and liberal concepts of nationality. It considers two attractive candidates: one locating the ‘core’ in a doctrine about the political and psychological significance of pre‐political cultural identities, the other in the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty. After assessing the limitations of both, I sketch a different core national doctrine. This doctrine is constitutive and geopolitical, not constitutional or cultural. It has deep roots in the security concerns specific to the modern, pluralistic system of sovereign states, and prescribes in general terms the form that any community should take in order to survive or distinguish itself in that system. It says very little about the appropriate basis for such communities; the choice of political, cultural, ethnic or even racial criteria is left wide open. More than other versions, this ‘core’ is able to identify the common ground between cultural, constitutional, and other national doctrines. It also puts a sharp focus on the reasons why, historically, national and liberal values have been so hard to combine.     

National Territory and the Reconstruction of History in Kazakhstan

This paper examines efforts to recreate the history of Kazakhstan for the purpose of bolstering that newly independent state's external and internal legitimacy. It first explores the interrelationship between nationalism and territory, and then proceeds to a discussion of the constructed historical linkages between the titular community and its current territory of residence. Included in the study is a brief review of counterhegemonic historiographies and also of relevant political conditions. Anchored in a theoretical framework, the paper incorporates population statistics as well as information obtained during interviews in Almaty in 2001. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, R23, Z13. 2 figures, 1 table, 92 references.