Constructing the ‘Neighborhood Sphere’: Gender and Community organizing [1]

This article examines organizing styles and issues in neighborhood activism to illustrate how activists seek to constitute a neighborhood community. It identifies the ways in which community organizing is gendered in both style and content, often separating 'women's' and 'men's' issues along an artificial public-private divide. This research illustrates, however, how neighborhood activists can use and challenge gendered forms of activism to integrate both public and private into an ideal of a neighborhood community. Using a case study of the Thomas-Dale Block Clubs in St Paul, Minnesota, the article examines how residents use gender-essentializing discourses of safety and parenting to insert household and family issues into a broader community arena. Further, it identifies how these discourses overlay cultural tensions in a diverse neighborhood. The activism in the block club organization studied here reflects a wide variety of community organizing strategies and concerns, focusing on defining and creating a neighborhood public sphere, to which, as the organization argued, every resident ought to be responsible and accountable.     

Liberal,Liminal and Lost: India’s First Diplomats and the Narrative of Foreign Policy

Indian historiography has largely overlooked the contribution of Indian Liberals in the pre-independence era. It is worse in Indian diplomatic history where studies on pre-independence are few and far between. Responding to this double excision, this article traces the emergence of a new Indian narrative of foreign policy around the issues of equality and justice in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Anchoring their argumentativeness in diplomatic finesse, Indian Liberals such as Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and Tej Bahadur Sapru relentlessly campaigned for racial equality and predominance of the rights of people over the rights of states at the Imperial Conferences. In the articulation of these views, South Africa, a country where ideas about the status of Indians and Indian civilisation were most contested, emerged as the singular foreign policy ‘other’ around which India’s foreign policy narrative was constructed.     

THE THERAPEUTIC STATE

State subsidy for the arts in Britain has been determined by a variety of political and social factors over the last two hundred years. This article examines the recent emergence of a therapeutic ethos that has come to shape arts policy in the United Kingdom. It begins with a survey of existing literature describing a shift in Britain’s arts policy since the 1970s. It examines the limitations of existing explanations and suggests another explanatory factor – the growing valorisation of the arts as a therapeutic tool to address social problems. This can be seen in two historically convergent trends: the challenge to cultural authority through the emergence of a therapeutic understanding of creativity, and the reorientation of political activism around issues of culture and wellbeing. Finally, the article considers how and why these ideas became institutionalised in Britain’s main arts policy body – the Arts Council.     

From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict: the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war1

Abstract. Beginning in the mid‐1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people over the past twenty years. It also analyses the influence informal societal pressures exerted on formal state institutions and how this contributed to institutional decay. Evaluating the relations that ensued between social organisations and the Sri Lankan state shows how institutions can prescribe actions and fashion motives even as it will make clear how the island's varied institutions generated a deadly political dynamic that eventually unleashed the ongoing civil war.     

Promoting Women's Rights,Hiding the Empire: Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux,an Imperialist Woman at the United Nations

This contribution examines the role of Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, the French representative in the UN Commission on the Status of Women between 1948 and 1953. By focusing on Lefaucheux's activism and connection with the French government, this article intends to analyse how French post-imperial policy carried out by reformist women's organisations pursued the expansion of women's and human rights whilst supporting the empire. Using a range of archival sources and the Commission's reports, this work argues that the role of reformist imperial women and organisations was crucial in influencing the Commission which was both a place of contestation and protection of the gendered and colonial order.     

Negotiating the nation: diaspora contestations in the USA about Hindu nationalism in India

ABSTRACT. Diaspora positions and identities are being continually constructed, negotiated and reframed. Nevertheless, many studies tend to focus on the ethno‐centric, exclusionary and/or nationalistic orientation of some groups. In this article, I will explore variations in the responses of the Indian American diaspora community to Hindu nationalism in India. The article will focus on the opposition of progressive groups to a particularly controversial Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi. They stand in contrast to those US‐based organisations that support Modi and his political ideology. The debate between the two sides shows a high degree of political polarisation within the community. This study illustrates the variations in interpretations of nationalism and identity that exist among groups operating in the transnational political space. In particular, it shows us that the political process that articulates these differences can impact policy in the home or adopted country.     

Variable Geography: America's Mental Maps of a Greater Europe

American backing for the process of European enlargement into central and east Europe remains strong despite differences of strategic interest, foreign policy choices and, during the past decade, a certain US ambivalence towards the trans-atlantic relationship. Drawing on a typology of 'mental maps', the author illustrates how the many and varied American ideas of what a future Europe might look like have guided US (and European) leaders in their attempts at defining this new post-Cold War Europe. Whether these maps can combine into clear policy is debatable. Yet the overall American mental map of Europe is becoming clearer. It includes Turkey, and it may include Ukraine and even Russia. However, concerns remain among US officials that this conception of a Greater Europe, equipped with its own foreign policy and military force, may prove a mixed blessing.     

Mediated mobilisation after the Arab Spring: how online activism is shaping Bahrain’s opposition

Drawing on fieldwork interviews and analysis of opposition social media posts, this article investigates how online forms of activism have been utilised by opposition groups during Bahrain's post-Arab Spring crackdown. Arguing that the antisystem opposition in particular has embraced ‘mediated mobilisation’ techniques, this article highlights the popularity of hybrid campaigns as drivers of online and offline activism. Contrasting the then-legal opposition society al-Wefaq with the banned, underground youth movement known as the February 14 Coalition, this article asserts that Bahrain's decentralised and anonymous antisystem opposition enjoys a structural advantage over regime-tolerated groups in their use of online activism. This article makes the case that mediated forms of mobilisation have fundamentally altered inter-opposition dynamics in post-Arab Spring Bahrain, and have strengthened the ability of antisystem groups such as the February 14 Coalition to challenge both the government and Bahrain's more established opposition societies.     

‘A separate people’? Some directions for comparative research on medieval women

Research to date has often positioned women of minority cultures as a separate group. They were, in many cases, twice removed — both from the men in their communities and from the majority communities within which they lived. This essay discusses the benefits of including these women, both as separate groups and as part of cross cultural comparison and points to the possible contribution of such studies. In the three parts of this article I propose different strategies for studying minority and majority women using examples from the sources on Jews in medieval Europe. In the first section, the article explores how to learn from similarities and differences between majority and minority practices, focusing on wet-nursing practices and medical care. The second part of the article proposes examining how ordinary people themselves perceived the ‘religiousness’ of certain everyday practices and set their own boundaries to what they were and were not willing to do. In this case, I suggest that more attention be paid to the way medieval women (and men) turned daily actions into religious proclamations and how in some cases they involved members of other religions in what seem to be internal affairs. This, in turn, leads to a final, larger comparative question taken up in the final part of the article: how do the larger trajectories of transformations in women's roles and rights compare across different religious cultural traditions.     

The politics of education for globalisation: managed activism in a time of crisis

Since the 1990s, governments of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have begun to promote their foreign aid politics domestically via global education. This policy remit has its origins in civil society and has been combined with a stated aim on the part of governments to prepare populations for globalisation, but also to convince populations of the need for increased aid spending in the context of various challenges, including calls for aid effectiveness, large-scale protest by the metropolitan left and rising parochialisms that diminish cosmopolitan world views. In the context of the apparent spontaneity of political mobilisation globally, this article seeks to qualify the optimism of the political sociology and social movements literature on the network society by comparing two OECD government remits for global/development education in the UK and Australia, which are attempts to manage or socially engineer civic activism and engagement. The problem which this article addresses is that, on the face of it, state funding of ‘global education’ appears to be a success of the activism of educators combined with the networked advocacy efforts of development non-governmental organisations, except that it has occurred in tension with international drivers to use education to further global economic competitiveness and governments' desire to promote their own foreign aid spending in a climate of falling legitimacy. This phenomenon of state funding for global education might be considered an elaboration of network politics, but this article argues that it must equally be read, via Gramsci, as a hegemonic contest in the struggle for subject production appropriate to the global knowledge economy.     

The politics of repressing environmentalists as agents of foreign influence

Theoretically, this article reveals the long-term risk for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of participating in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), accepting money from foreign sources and throwing ‘boomerangs’ internationally—a strategy used by local NGOs to seek international allies to pressure repressive and unresponsive states at home. Focusing primarily on the suppression of environmental NGOs that oppose natural-resource extraction, this article examines three cases—Russia, India and Australia—to illuminate the consequences of this trend for local civil society and TANs. It also documents a global trend towards states depicting local NGOs with international linkages as subversive agents of foreign interests, justifying legal crackdowns and the severing of foreign funding and ties. State framing of NGOs as agents of foreign interests is repressing local environmental activism, depoliticising civil society and weakening international NGO alliances—a conclusion with far-reaching consequences for the future of TANs, local NGOs and environmental activism.     

Seeing for the state: Kemalist long‐distance nationalism in Australia

The recent literature on Muslim organisations in the Turkish diaspora context is voluminous as is analysis of Kurdish and Alevi grassroots politics against the Turkish state. Yet nothing has been written on those whose political orientation is in line with the secularist‐nationalist ideology of the Turkish Republic, that is, of Kemalists. As a contribution to this endeavour, this paper explores Kemalist actors' mobilisation in Australia. The paper argues that their current activism is related to a threatened economic privilege, a loss of cultural capital and a waning political dominance in the ongoing social life of Turkey.     

‘A separate people’? Some directions for comparative research on medieval women

Research to date has often positioned women of minority cultures as a separate group. They were, in many cases, twice removed — both from the men in their communities and from the majority communities within which they lived. This essay discusses the benefits of including these women, both as separate groups and as part of cross cultural comparison and points to the possible contribution of such studies. In the three parts of this article I propose different strategies for studying minority and majority women using examples from the sources on Jews in medieval Europe. In the first section, the article explores how to learn from similarities and differences between majority and minority practices, focusing on wet-nursing practices and medical care. The second part of the article proposes examining how ordinary people themselves perceived the ‘religiousness’ of certain everyday practices and set their own boundaries to what they were and were not willing to do. In this case, I suggest that more attention be paid to the way medieval women (and men) turned daily actions into religious proclamations and how in some cases they involved members of other religions in what seem to be internal affairs. This, in turn, leads to a final, larger comparative question taken up in the final part of the article: how do the larger trajectories of transformations in women's roles and rights compare across different religious cultural traditions.     

Imaging the materiality of a diaspora: Recording the biographies of Greek Orthodox church buildings in London

The materiality of world diasporas – in every form, from landmark features to everyday objects – is a relatively modern approach towards studying the diasporas' relationship with both homeland and hostland. Photo narratives and various modes of imaging can be employed to better record, assess and disseminate the narratives of diasporic lifeways in terms of their material culture. This article examines how Greek Orthodox communities have altered Western denomination church buildings in London to serve their spiritual and community needs. The new, amalgamated characteristics are described, while the debate around the role these religious communities should play in the hostland is also discussed.     

Neo-conservatives and their American critics

This review article examines four recent American books relating, in very different ways, to the rise of unilateralism and neo-conservatism in the United States. Richard Perle and David Frum, former advisors to George W. Bush robustly present the 'neo-conservative' case. Max Boot, another unilateralist, argues from the experience of American history that small wars have often been as important as big wars in projecting American power; and he suggests that this experience has a present-day relevance. Ivo Daalder (who served in the Clinton administration) and his co-author James Lindsay, set out to explain the 'Bush revolution' in foreign policy and put it in context. They insist that Bush is not a mere tool of his advisors, who are in any case not homogenous. His foreign policy strategy is indeed new, although it has given rise to certain unresolved problems. Robert McNamara (a former US Defense Secretary) and James Blight, share the fear of nuclear terrorism but argue that it can only be contained through the universal elimination of weapons of mass destruction, under the supervision of a possibly reformed UN. They oppose the unilateral use of force by the US except when America itself is attacked. They also argue that the US must change its posture from 'deterrence' to 'reassurance' and show more empathy in addressing the concerns of other countries and communities.
The review concludes that America is now deeply divided over its foreign policy and that events, rather than arguments, may decide the outcome of the debate.     

China,the international criminal court,and global governance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the Chinese policies towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the context of global governance. Despite China’s fast-growing foreign policy competence, the level of confidence held by China in engaging with global governance systems has not yet fully transmitted to the legal institutions governing human rights issues, and the ICC is such an example. This article examines specific policy concerns of China regarding the ICC in light of China’s engagement with global governance, and some of the traditional concerns that have had an impact on that engagement. It discusses the extent to which these concerns should still be regarded as policy barriers preventing China’s full accession to the ICC in years to come.     

Extranational spaces and the disruption of national boundaries: Turkish immigrant media and claims against the state in 1980s West Germany

After the 1980 coup that shook Turkey and almost twenty years after the bilateral ‘guest worker’ treaty shifted Germany's demographic make‐up, West German policy makers proposed increasingly restrictive regulations on the ‘guest workers’ who had heavily contributed to West Germany's economy. In this crucial historical moment, Turkish‐language newspapers, published in West Germany, created a politically motivated extranational public sphere in which they launched claims against both the West German and Turkish states. These claims shaped immigration and integration policy between the two countries, fostered diasporic activism and cross‐national religious and political organisations and gave rise to a variety of unexpected organisational outcomes that continue to impact both Germany and the Turkish Republic.     

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the South Sudan question: reconsidering moderation

This article examines the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement's stand on the South Sudan question. The aim here is to contribute to the ongoing debate over the MB's moderation. Throughout the civil war in Sudan, the MB consistently objected to South Sudanese secession. Yet, while it had traditionally framed its objection in religious terms, describing the South Sudanese struggle as a Christian conspiracy against Islam, in the decade preceding South Sudan's declaration of independence it moved to base its opposition on more practical grounds, revolving around issues such the absence of democracy, stability and infrastructure in South Sudan. This correlated with wider shifts in the MB. Since the 1990s, the movement has claimed to have undergone a transformation, adopting a moderate, pro‐democratic stance. These statements persuaded many scholars that the MB has come to represent political moderation in both its domestic and international agenda. More recent works on the movement, however, have come to question the MB's moderation hypothesis, suggesting that even though the movement has changed its discourse and some aspects of its activism, this could not be seen as a linear process of moderation. This article uses the South Sudan case to further support this critique from a foreign policy perspective. It demonstrates that even though the MB changed its tactics and discourse, its goals remained unchanged— even when the circumstances and the normative environment changed dramatically. Moreover, it shows that at times of crisis, the liberal discourse gave way to the old‐fashioned radical discourse of previous decades.     

Sir Philip Mitchell and the Indian Ocean, 1944–49

This article examines the strategic initiatives that Sir Philip Mitchell, governor of Kenya, brought to Great Britain’s Indian Ocean imperial and diplomatic policy in the years following the Second World War. Seeking to give strategic shape to his own coastal Islamic sympathies, Mitchell encroached on high-level policy debates with a proposal to reorganise Britain’s Western Indian Ocean around a political directorate to administer the coastal zones from Aden to Tanganyika. Such a cadre, Mitchell argued, would provide a valuable defensive bulwark against nationalist agitation and a ‘civilised’ foundation for local government initiatives. This paper brings together biography, strategic policy and area studies to demonstrate how Africa’s decolonisation shaped and limited the strategic options for Britain’s post-war Indian Ocean policy. Mitchell’s proposal broached a fascinating debate concerning the Indian Ocean as a realm of historical experience and future political construction.     

A new Mexican nationalism? Indigenous rights,constitutional reform and the conflicting meanings of multiculturalism*

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the recent Mexican controversy about the legal status of the indigenous population and the nature of nationalism, which is linked to recent constitutional amendments and new policy strategies. Changes in legislation and policy are examined in the context of a widespread economic and political crisis of the populist regime after 1982, which radically affected the previous indigenist discourse; but they are also seen as having been motivated by Indian demands and mobilisations against the official vision of citizenship as a function of cultural homogeneity and mestizaje. The article analyses the implications of the new constitutional amendments and the heated debates that they have provoked among different political actors, including indigenous organisations. In particular, it examines two areas of disagreement. The first concerns the multiple meanings of multiculturalism – as a threat of fragmentation and fundamentalism, a new form of state control or a strategy for indigenous national participation and empowerment. The second concerns the definition and levels of implementation of indigenous political autonomy. Negotiation over such disagreements, leading to inclusive citizenship, constitute a great challenge for ethnic intellectuals and theoreticians of Mexican nationalism.