Are You in This Country? How “Local” Social Relations Can Limit the “Globalisation” of Customer Services Supply Chains

Abstract: The relocation of thousands of call centre and back office jobs from the UK to subcontractors in India in the early 2000s led to extensive speculation that the “globalisation” and “jobs flight” of service work was underway. Yet as this article illustrates some call centre customer services do not easily transfer to different local, social and cultural contexts. Call centre operations are embedded in local social relations and taken for granted skills that are difficult to reproduce outside of the locality which has produced them. Nevertheless the spatial dispersal of work can be as much a political process as it is an economic one. This article, which follows the journey of 1000 call centre jobs from the UK to India, illuminates how subcontracting service work “offshore” can facilitate a transformation of the employment relation and an escape from a difficult to discipline labour force.     

Babi–Baha'i Expansion and “Geo‐Cultural Breakthroughs”

Utilising the concept of “geo‐cultural breakthroughs,” the article briefly describes the process of Babi‐Baha'i expansion, tracing the way in which the early Babi movement was later transformed into the Baha'i Faith, and the Baha'i movement itself underwent a succession of massive transformations in the range and diversity of its following. Three main stages and three “worlds” of expansion are identified: (i) an initial “Islamic” stage (1844–c. 1892), in which Babism and the early Baha'i movement were largely confined to the environing culture and society of the Islamic Middle East and its cultural extensions; (ii) an “international” stage (c. 1892–c. 1953), during which Baha'i missionary expansion succeeded in transcending the religion's Islamic roots, in particular by gaining a small but intensely active Western following; and (iii) the present “global” stage from about 1953 onwards, in which the Baha'i Faith has begun to assume the characteristics of a small‐scale world religion, with larger numbers of adherents having been gained, particularly in some parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, regions outside of both the religion's original Islamic heartland and the West.     

“I found the truth in Foot Locker”: London 2011, Urban Culture,and the Post‐Political City

The article begins with an overview of what is implied in the notion of the “post‐political” before looking closely at post‐political interpretations of the 2011 London riots. It presents a critique of the restricted sense of political subjectivity in such accounts. It demonstrates how participation in the riots and their aftermath may be seen as indicative of an embryonic form of urban politics that works with and against the post‐political city. This discussion is illuminated by an analysis of the discursive space of London hip‐hop which reveals an ironic, complex and reflexive dialogue about identity, justice and politics that is far removed from the caricature offered by “strong” interpretations of the post‐political subject. This is then linked to readings of the post‐political city that place a welcome stress not only on the evacuation of the political dimension from the city, but also on the opportunities for the re‐emergence of the proto‐political.     

“The Gospel Has Always Been Disturbing”: The Centrality of “God's Will” to the Cold War Political Activism of the Reverends Frank Hartley and Alfred Dickie

Religious faith was pivotal to the personal ideologies and radical political activism of the Reverends Alf Dickie and Frank Hartley, both of whom were prominent in the Australian peace movement from 1949 until the early seventies. This article examines Dickie's and Hartley's self‐identification as prophets in the context of the optimism of the post‐war era and its subsequent retreat as the Cold War altered the political climate. It examines how their post‐war political activism was framed by a devout faith in the existence of an objective “truth” with regard to the Cold War, a “truth” based on a self‐styled notion of the “Will of God”. Further, it argues that suffering was understood by these self‐declared prophets to be inherent to their mission and was thus embraced, when ostensibly visited upon them, as an affirmation of the righteousness of their cause. For Dickie and Hartley, an active association with the radical Left was a natural expression of God's Will.     

“Solidarity is our weapon”: Social Mobilisation in Scotland in the Contest of the Post‐Political Condition

The consensual climate of the post‐political order has been recently disrupted in Europe. The mass protests staged in different European countries and the resurgences of the extreme parties in response to the multiple European crises witness the “cracks” in consensual politics. While much of the scholarly attention has been drawn onto the socio‐political implications of large‐scale upraises, the contribution of bottom‐up sub‐national groups to the “return of the political” has been under‐researched. Therefore, this article focuses on sub‐national grassroots groups as instances of the “properly political” (Swyngedouw 2009, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33[3]:601–620). It is contended that these groups, by putting in place acts of solidarity, are “agonistic” political forms, containing in nuce the potential to counteract the post‐political order and to shape a new politics. To interrogate this argument, the article reports the findings of a case study analysis involving four grassroots groups based in Scotland.     

THE “THEORETICAL REVOLUTION” IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: FROM THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS TO THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL LANGUAGES

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so‐called new “politico‐intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico‐conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico‐intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.     

Building a City For “The People”: The Politics of Alliance‐Building in the Sydney Green Ban Movement

How can we act to contest urban injustice? This article grapples with this question through an analysis of the green ban movement that emerged in Sydney in the 1970s. For a time, this unruly alliance of construction workers, resident activists, and progressive professionals powerfully enacted a radical right to the city, blocking a range of unjust and destructive “developments” worth billions of dollars and proposing alternative development plans in their place. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how the figure of “the people” was crucial to their action. The article examines the rights and the authority that was invested in “the people” by green ban activists, and traces the work of political subjectification through which “the people” was constructed. “The people” was not invoked as a simple majority or as a universal subject whose unity glossed over differences. Rather, in acting as/for “the people”, green ban activists produced a political subject able to challenge the claims of elected politicians, bureaucrats and developers to represent the interests of the city. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this construction of “the people” for urban politics today.     

Radical Environmentalism and “Commoning”: Synergies Between Ecosystem Regeneration and Social Governance at Tamera Ecovillage,Portugal

This article explores the scope and limitations of Radical Environmentalism as a source of practices of “commoning”. The application of the radical environmental “Healing Biotope” model in Tamera, an ecovillage located in southern Portugal, further expands the understanding of “commoning” as a social process, as well as of Radical Environmentalism as a cognitive framework. This article distinguishes between the technical and political dimensions of “commoning”. It also identifies two structuring dimensions of Radical Environmentalism, hereby called integrative rationality and the experiential action research and learning methodology. These dimensions support the technical aspect of “commoning” in Tamera by promoting epistemic and methodological coherence between social and environmental technologies. Despite their contested scientific validity, they contribute to the sustainability of the project by promoting synergies between ecological regeneration and social governance. However, they have limited capacity to address the political dimension of “commoning”, related with rank and socio‐economic inequalities among members.     

Draper,the “Conflict Thesis” and Secularising Politics in Late Nineteenth‐Century Argentina

Despite appearances to the contrary, late nineteenth‐century Buenos Aires (Argentina) seems to be a suitable scale model to explore the relationships between the “conflict thesis” and secularisation. John W. Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) arrived in the country in the midst of political battles over the shape of the future relationships between the state and the majoritarian Catholic Church. In the decade between 1875 and 1885 variants of the “conflict thesis” were expounded, discussed, and used as rhetorical weapons in the battles over the issue of religious teaching in elementary schools. This article analyses the discussions over the “conflict thesis” between liberal secularists and Catholics in newspaper articles, public speeches, parliamentary debates, and other forms of public discourse during that period. Against the backdrop of a weak institutional church, a vigorous growth of nascent scientific institutions, and a cultural atmosphere permeated by positivism, the opposing parties argued about the “conflict thesis” while each reclaimed for itself the legitimacy of science. The episode permits a close look at how the intellectual leaders who conceived the project of a secularised state utilised science‐based philosophies for purposes of political argument and ideological legitimation.     

The Crisis of the “Disadvantaged Child”: Poverty Research,IQ, and Muppet Diplomacy in the 1960s

In the early 1960s, the US federal government deemed poverty to be a national crisis, and actively intervened to solve this problem. My question for this article is how did preschool education become a key site to remedy this crisis? Government interventions were a combination of poverty research, racialized politics, and child development. I show how the discipline of early childhood education cohered around the term “disadvantaged child”, in turn influencing the War on Poverty policies, including the basis of Head Start preschool education. During this same decade proponents of Sesame Street—with private funding, along with extensive testing mechanisms by consultants—argued that the television could reach more children, therefore be more cost effective. This paper investigates how surplus populations became determined and demarcated, as early as three years old. I question how televised preschool taught “affective skills” and proper social relations during times of political crisis.     

“Love,Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject‐Making in Central Europe

Abstract: This paper uses NATO enlargement to examine the processes through which political subjects are made. Starting from the observation that the world's most powerful military alliance is increasingly framed not in terms of military defence, but in terms of democracy, freedom, and “European values”, the paper analyzes how this process works, and with what effects. It shows how NATO is, on the one hand, being made so common‐sense as to be boring—below political debate—while, on the other, being made existential and essential—above debate. The effect is a kind of banal militarism: an unremarkable assumption that the military apparatus is ethically grounded and capable for achieving peace. By showing how this assumption is produced and maintained, the paper highlights a key mechanism in the militarization of political life.     

Undoing Nature: The John Muir Trust's “Journey for the Wild”, the UK,Summer 2006

Abstract: I take as a point of departure for a discussion of the idea of nature the John Muir Trust's much publicised Journey for the Wild which took place in the UK during the summer of 2006. My objective is to explore how, at the same time that the “wild” was performed as a political category through the Journey, replicating the binary nature/society, prevalent norms of nature that depend on that binary, including, ironically, those of John Muir himself, were “undone”. I work with Judith Butler's (2004, Undoing Gender) ideas of “doing” and “undoing” gender and what counts as human, and her link between the articulation of gender and the human on the one hand and, on the other, a politics of new possibilities. Taking her argument “elsewhere”—unravelling what is performed as “wild” and what counts as “nature”—and using as evidence the art of Eoin Cox, the actions of journeyers, extracts from their diaries and from Messages for the Wild delivered to the Scottish Parliament, I suggest that the idea of a working wild points towards more socially just political possibilities than a politics of nature defined through a binary.     

“The Balkans’ Other within”: Imaginings of the West in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the case study of the Republic of Macedonia, I explore how people who live in a realm conventionally cast as insufficient of “the European Self” imagine “the West”. Such imaginings are important because they are intertwined with negotiations of nationhood and citizenship. I argue that in local constructions of the global social order, Macedonia emerges in an interstitial position between “the Balkans” and “the West” as “the Balkans’ Other Within”. Social actors craft this position out of Western hegemonic constructions of the Balkans as a socio‐political anomaly and portray “the Other within” (Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise. The case study of Macedonia allows us to refine the concepts of “Balkanism” by underlining local perspectives on the promise that “the West” carries for the Balkans and “Orientalism” by emphasizing the possibilities that the construction of the Orient charts for the future advancement or demise of the Self.     

The Urban Injustices of New Labour's “New Urban Renewal”: The Case of the Aylesbury Estate in London

This paper discusses the urban injustices of New Labour's “new urban renewal”, that is the state‐led gentrification of British council estates, undertaken through the guise of mixed communities policy, on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, London, one of the largest council estates in Europe. In this particular case of post‐political planning I show how the tenant support for the regeneration programme was manipulated and misrepresented and how choices were closed down for them, leaving them ultimately with a “false choice” between a regeneration they did not want or the further decline of their estate. I look at what the estate residents thought/think about the whole process and how they have resisted, and are resisting, the gentrification of their estate. I show revanchist and post‐political practices, but ultimately I refuse to succumb to these dystopian narratives, very attractive as they are, for conflict/dissent has not been completely smothered and resistance to gentrification in and around the Aylesbury is alive and well. I argue that we urgently need to re‐establish the city as the driver of democratic politics with an emancipatory agenda, rather than one that ratifies the status quo or gets mired in a dystopic post‐justice city.     

Heritage Discourse and the Desexualisation of Public Space: The “Historical Restorations” of Bloomsbury's Squares

Abstract: In recent years, the local authorities in London's historic Bloomsbury district have carried out a number of refurbishments of the area's public squares. These landscaping schemes have typically been labelled “historical restorations” in attempts to predetermine the evaluation criteria as “historic” rather than political, social and aesthetic. Focusing on Russell Square and Bloomsbury Square, this paper illustrates how the “restorations” were selective: the introduction of gates and railings and the removal of planting were not primarily designed to restore these historical gardens, but reflect a surveillance‐friendly ideal of urban space, specifically introduced to displace the men who used these squares for cruising. Through a detailed review of archival material from both mainstream and gay media, I illustrate the shifting forms of policing and landscaping in Bloomsbury's squares, while also highlighting how homonormative capital has colluded with the regulation of public space in this part of London.     

On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

This introduction calls for political ecology to systematically engage with the ways that white supremacy shapes human relationships with land through entangled processes of settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism. To develop the analytic of abolition ecology, we begin with the articulation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ abolition democracy together with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s spatially attuned analytic of abolition geography. Rather than define communities by the violence they suffer, abolition ecologies call for attention to radical place‐making and the land, air and water based environments within which places are made. To that end, we suggest that an abolition ecology demands attention to the ways that coalitional land‐based politics dismantle oppressive institutions and to the promise of abolition, which Gilmore describes as making “freedom as a place”.     

The “Iron Cage” and the “Shell as Hard as Steel”: Parsons,Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In the climax to The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber writes of the stahlhartes Gehäuse that modern capitalism has created, a concept that Talcott Parsons famously rendered as the “iron cage.” This article examines the status of Parsons's canonical translation; the putative sources of its imagery (in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress); and the more complex idea that Weber himself sought to evoke with the “shell as hard as steel”: a reconstitution of the human subject under bureaucratic capitalism in which “steel” becomes emblematic of modernity. Steel, unlike the “element” iron, is a product of human fabrication. It is both hard and potentially flexible. Further, whereas a cage confines human agents, but leaves their powers otherwise intact, a “shell” suggests that modern capitalism has created a new kind of being. After examining objections to this interpretation, I argue that whatever the problems with Parsons's “iron cage” as a rendition of Weber's own metaphor, it has become a “traveling idea,” a fertile coinagein its own right, an intriguing example of how the translator's imagination can impose itself influentially on the text and its readers.     

“An auxiliary,not an usurper”: John Saunders,Temperance, and Secularisation

In his influential account of the political history of early colonial Australia, Michael Roe identified the temperance movement of the 1830s–1840s as a pivotal factor in the secularisation of Australian culture and institutions. The belief system that drove the movement, he argued, was not traditional Christian doctrine but a “new faith” of “moral enlightenment.” In this article I test the validity of Roe's claim, drawing on the work of a more recent generation of historians and sociologists who have argued for more “porous” and “reciprocal” accounts of concepts such as reason, religion, the Enlightenment, and the secular. Its focus is on the writings and activities of John Saunders, whose endeavours on behalf of the temperance cause were such that he was described by his contemporaries as the “life and soul” of the society, the “father” of the movement, and the “apostle of temperance.” It examines the role played by key Enlightenment motifs such as improvement, optimism, reason and cooperation within the rhetoric of Saunders's writings and the reasoning that informed his actions, exploring the various and complicated ways in which he articulated the relationship between evangelical religious conviction and the quest for the common good.     

“Follow the Tree Flowers”: Fugitive Mapping in Beloved

This article attempts to analyse mapping practices at the intersection of geography, black studies and literary studies, in order to reassess the political and pedagogical possibilities of mapping under late capitalism. I turn to Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to track black cartographic practices otherwise obscured or, as Katherine McKittrick writes, “rendered ungeographic”. The novel offers a hidden and unauthorised archive for the often clandestine geographic practices that make possible fugitivity from the mechanics of “slaveholding agro‐capitalism” and its ongoing legacy. As an unofficial archive of black geographic practice, Morrison’s novel might itself be thought of as a map: a contemporary mode of memorialising the depth of place, relation, and navigation—a depth no two‐dimensional map can accommodate. Finally, this article demonstrates the valuable interventions that black studies and black creative production can make within the subfields of critical cartography and critical geography.