Navigating the Fault Lines: Race and Class in Philadelphia's Solidarity Economy

In debates over post‐capitalist politics, growing attention has been paid to the solidarity economy (SE), a framework that draws together diverse practices ranging from co‐ops to community gardens. Despite proponents’ commitment to inclusion, racial and class divides suffuse the SE movement. Using qualitative fieldwork and an original SE dataset, this article examines the geospatial composition of the SE within the segregated geography of Philadelphia. We find that though the SE as a whole is widely distributed across the city, it is, with the exception of community gardens, largely absent from poor neighborhoods of color. We also identify SE clusters in racially and economically diverse border areas rather than in predominantly affluent White neighborhoods. Such findings complicate claims about the SE's emancipatory potential and underscore the need for its realignment towards people of color and the poor. We conclude with examples of how the SE might more fully address racial injustice.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.     

Symbolic Racism,Institutional Bias,and Welfare Drug Testing Legislation: Racial Biases Matter

Since the devolution of welfare policymaking to the states after the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, there has been contentious debate about drug testing welfare applicants. Beyond elite rhetoric and debate points about the implications of welfare drug testing, extant research remains limited insofar as providing theoretical understanding about what factors influence state proposal of legislation requiring welfare applicants to submit to drug tests. I develop and test expectations that derive from research on welfare attitudes, social construction theory, and policy design—specifically, hypotheses that the proportion of blacks on state temporary assistance for needy families caseloads, as well as state‐aggregate levels of symbolic racism, significantly influence state proposal of drug testing legislation. My multilevel analysis of every state proposal of welfare drug testing legislation from 2008 to 2014 yields strong evidence in support of these hypotheses and paints a more complete picture of the influence of racial attitudes on state welfare policymaking. Specifically, while much research finds evidence of institutional racial biases in the implementation of welfare policy, the evidence presented herein shows that these biases, as well as public biases, influence policymaking at the proposal stage. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of recent significant electoral gains made by Republicans in state legislatures.     

The case of Asialink’s arts residency program: towards a critical cosmopolitan approach to cultural diplomacy

This paper explores the ways in which one of Australia’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at bringing Australia closer to Asia – the Asialink Arts Residency Program – may provide valuable insights for reimagining cultural diplomacy with a revised understanding of the national interest that reflects the increasingly transnational realities of the contemporary world. Drawing on extensive data gained from interviews and an online survey, the author found that program participants are engaging in exceptionally complex and at times unintended activities, and that policy concerns, such as positive image projection abroad, are rarely high on the residents’ list of priorities. However, these experiences are of particular value for the national interest, in ways not yet formulated by or included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses. With the findings in mind, the author takes a critical cosmopolitan approach to reconceptualising cultural diplomacy.     

Australia’s Colombo Plans,old and new: international students as foreign relations

This article draws on recent research and policy developments to make a case for considering international students as an important component of Australian foreign relations. It links historical and contemporary Australian experiences of international students, especially in the Colombo Plan and New Colombo Plan, to the field of public diplomacy, and sets an agenda for further research in this direction. It highlights the need to recover student voices and to be sensitive to the emergence of everyday or ‘vernacular’ internationalism, as a phenomenon of international students visiting, traveling and otherwise encountering different groups of Australians. It suggests a need to take up anew this form of inquiry for both earlier postwar student experiences and the post-1980s period, in which international students’ voices are frequently silenced by debates over commodification, funding needs, and neo-liberal economics.     

Neoliberalism,the Developmental State and Civil Society in Korea

Following the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, some scholars predicted that the introduction of neoliberal ideas and policies would result in the definitive passing of the Korean developmental state. Despite these predictions, Korean state elites have retained their influential position as economic managers by, for instance, practicing a revised form of industrial policy. Neoliberal reform has, however, had significant social implications. Rather than neoliberalism acting as a democratising force that curtails the power of the state, this article illustrates that the Korean state has used the reform agenda to justify an expansion of its powers. The state presented itself as an agent capable of resolving long-standing economic problems, and of defending law and order. By doing so, the state reduced the political space available to non-state actors. The article concludes that for some states, neoliberalism is a means of retaining economic and political influence, and that former developmental states may be particularly adept at co-opting elements of civil society into governing alliances.     

China’s Evolving Policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Xi Jinping

Despite international pressure to condemn North Korea (DPRK), China’s successive leaderships have dealt carefully with Pyongyang, especially vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons program. This moderate stance reflects the two countries’ decades-long relationship, summarised in the Chinese idiom that Pyongyang and Beijing are “as close as lips and teeth”. Nevertheless, the DPRK’s third nuclear test in February 2013 raised enormous challenges for the new Xi Jinping leadership to maintain the previous DPRK policy focused on the status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China’s attitudes and policies towards the DPRK after the provocative third test signified a possible reorientation of Beijing’s DPRK policy. This generated repercussions in the countries concerned and prompted debates among experts. This article asks how these events should be understood and what their implications are for the Xi leadership’s policy on the DPRK, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast Asia. Given China’s competitive relations with other major powers, we conclude that the Xi leadership will not abandon the DPRK; indeed it will reinforce the policy of strengthening China’s influence over it. Nonetheless one aspect of doing so will involve China opening up to other – cooperative, multilateral – approaches to reinforcing stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.     

The economic impact of the Australia–US free trade agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into effect in 2005. It was the second preferential trade agreement that Australia signed, after its agreement with Singapore, and marked a departure from the primacy of Australia's previous trade policy of unilateral and multilateral trade liberalisation toward preferential liberalisation. This paper assesses the economic effects of AUSFTA by applying the Productivity Commission's gravity model of trade from its Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements review. The evidence reveals AUSFTA resulted in a fall in Australian and US trade with the rest of the world—that the agreement led to trade diversion. Estimates also show that AUSFTA is associated with a reduction in trade between Australia and the United States.