Pub Date : 2018-05-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418811763
Prapimphan Chiengkul
This article explores the degrowth movement’s main ideas, policy proposals, and examples of noncapitalist organizations and socially embedded economic networks compatible with degrowth ideas, namely, the Catalan Integral Cooperatives in Spain and Solidarity Economy Networks in Italy. It also explores degrowth’s relevance to developing countries that have lower levels of material living standards compared to the European countries where it originated. The main argument of this article is that degrowth has significant potential to advance progressive socioecological transformation. Its advocates have also implemented some interesting alternative economic practices, such as nonmonetary exchanges and recreations of the commons, which prioritize socioecological sustainability over profit maximization. However, the degrowth movement has so far paid little attention to the structural hierarchy of the global political economy and hence has not made sufficient suggestions about how to address uneven development within and between countries, which will likely hinder progressive and ecologically sustainable transitions across the globe. Unfair global trade practices and concentrated control over advanced technologies are contentious points that might prevent widespread support for degrowth ideas in developing countries. Some developing countries and subnational local groups also face more constraints than others if they want to scale-up noncapitalist initiatives that are compatible with the degrowth vision, not to mention that some might lack financial means to drive transformative change. These issues cut across the spheres of production, consumption, trade, and finance, which suggests that structural reforms of the global political economy are called for to address unequal relations between developed and developing countries and also inequality within countries.
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Pub Date : 2018-02-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418775851
Morten Ougaard
Ian Taylor challenges the concepts of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) and state, suggesting that Poulantzas’s notion of the “internal bourgeoisie” is a better theoretical starting point for the analysis of transnational class formation and that the transnational state (TNS) is a step too far. This critique is not convincing. It is debatable to what extent it is a “Poulantzian reading.” The rejection of the notion of a TCC is unsustainable because of compelling evidence for the existence of such a class with articulated shared interests and organizations tasked with pursuing them. The critique of the TNS has some validity, but largely because proponents of the concept have been insufficiently clear on the consequences of upscaling the state concept to the global level. When this is acknowledged, the relevance and usefulness of the concept is that it enables state theoretical analysis of demonstrably existing TNS apparatuses that perform TNS functions, shaped by transnational relations of power between social forces, involving both structural power and direct engagement in transnational sites of contestation. There are now transnational elements of all fundamental characteristics of the capitalist state except one, the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Finally, Taylor does not provide an alternative approach to theorizing what descriptively is known as global governance.
Ian Taylor挑战了跨国资本主义阶级和国家的概念，认为Poulantzas的“内部资产阶级”概念是分析跨国阶级形成的一个更好的理论起点，跨国国家（TNS）走得太远了。这种批评并不令人信服。在多大程度上，这是一种“普兰齐亚式的解读”，这是有争议的。拒绝TCC概念是不可持续的，因为有令人信服的证据表明，存在这样一个具有明确共同利益的阶层和负责追求这些利益的组织。对TNS的批评有一定的有效性，但主要是因为该概念的支持者对将国家概念提升到全球水平的后果不够清楚。当这一点得到承认时，这一概念的相关性和有用性在于，它使国家能够对执行TNS功能的明显存在的TNS机构进行理论分析，这些TNS机构由社会力量之间的跨国权力关系塑造，既涉及结构权力，也涉及跨国竞争场所的直接参与。现在，除了垄断合法使用暴力之外，资本主义国家的所有基本特征都具有跨国因素。最后，泰勒没有提供一种替代方法来理论化所谓的全球治理。
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Pub Date : 2018-02-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418789722
Ville Suuronen
Hannah Arendt’s support for the “right to have rights” arises as a critical response to the modern biopolitical human condition. While Arendt’s reflections on human rights have received broad recognition, the question concerning the economic preconditions of citizenship in her work remains an unduly neglected subject. This article takes up this issue and argues that, for Arendt, the fulfillment of basic social rights is the sine qua non without which the fulfillment of political rights is impossible. Thinking with and against Arendt, I show that her famous distinction between the private, the social, and the political can be fruitfully reinterpreted as an argument for basic income. When Arendt’s reflections on human rights are read in the light of her ideas concerning technology and automation, she no longer appears as a theorist who ignores social justice, but as a thinker who seeks to counter the modern biopolitical human condition and open up new realms for democratic political action. Instead of ignoring social questions, Arendt argues that with the help of technology, we can strive to politicize fundamental social questions in a way that they would achieve a self-evident stature as human rights, and as fundamental human rights, rise above political debate, even though we would remain conscious of their political origins. Arendt does not simply exclude “the social questions” from politics but argues that this is what all technologically developed societies can strive to do. In Arendt’s futuristic vision, the private life of citizens will be politicized through technological intervention: ancient slaves will be replaced by machines. By comparing Arendt with Foucault and Agamben, I maintain that a critical reading of her work can provide us with a pathway toward understanding the right to life’s basic necessities, to zoe, as a future human right.
{"title":"Resisting Biopolitics","authors":"Ville Suuronen","doi":"10.1177/0304375418789722","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375418789722","url":null,"abstract":"Hannah Arendt’s support for the “right to have rights” arises as a critical response to the modern biopolitical human condition. While Arendt’s reflections on human rights have received broad recognition, the question concerning the economic preconditions of citizenship in her work remains an unduly neglected subject. This article takes up this issue and argues that, for Arendt, the fulfillment of basic social rights is the sine qua non without which the fulfillment of political rights is impossible. Thinking with and against Arendt, I show that her famous distinction between the private, the social, and the political can be fruitfully reinterpreted as an argument for basic income. When Arendt’s reflections on human rights are read in the light of her ideas concerning technology and automation, she no longer appears as a theorist who ignores social justice, but as a thinker who seeks to counter the modern biopolitical human condition and open up new realms for democratic political action. Instead of ignoring social questions, Arendt argues that with the help of technology, we can strive to politicize fundamental social questions in a way that they would achieve a self-evident stature as human rights, and as fundamental human rights, rise above political debate, even though we would remain conscious of their political origins. Arendt does not simply exclude “the social questions” from politics but argues that this is what all technologically developed societies can strive to do. In Arendt’s futuristic vision, the private life of citizens will be politicized through technological intervention: ancient slaves will be replaced by machines. By comparing Arendt with Foucault and Agamben, I maintain that a critical reading of her work can provide us with a pathway toward understanding the right to life’s basic necessities, to zoe, as a future human right.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2018-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0304375418789722","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48450439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-02-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418784220
N. N. Esentürk
{"title":"Book Review: The European Parliament and Its International Relations","authors":"N. N. Esentürk","doi":"10.1177/0304375418784220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375418784220","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2018-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0304375418784220","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44549907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418754404
B. Aras
This article investigates to what extent Turkish humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are able to alleviate human suffering as the ultimate goal of medical humanitarianism. To answer this question, the study investigates the efficiency of Turkish humanitarian NGOs in general with a specific focus on Uganda. It explores how their aid surfaces on the ground, to what extent it is aligned with country needs and priorities, the extent to which these initiatives help to strengthen or improve existing health systems, Turkish NGOs’ criteria for aid, and the challenges they face. Turkish NGOs’ distribution of medical aid is aligned with country needs and priorities, and their initiatives help strengthen and improve existing health systems. However, their sustainability is threatened by challenges of overreliance on voluntarism and lack of sufficient expertise, capacity, and funding.
{"title":"Medical Humanitarianism of Turkey’s NGOS","authors":"B. Aras","doi":"10.1177/0304375418754404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375418754404","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates to what extent Turkish humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are able to alleviate human suffering as the ultimate goal of medical humanitarianism. To answer this question, the study investigates the efficiency of Turkish humanitarian NGOs in general with a specific focus on Uganda. It explores how their aid surfaces on the ground, to what extent it is aligned with country needs and priorities, the extent to which these initiatives help to strengthen or improve existing health systems, Turkish NGOs’ criteria for aid, and the challenges they face. Turkish NGOs’ distribution of medical aid is aligned with country needs and priorities, and their initiatives help strengthen and improve existing health systems. However, their sustainability is threatened by challenges of overreliance on voluntarism and lack of sufficient expertise, capacity, and funding.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0304375418754404","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44548917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418770296
R. Mathur
This article is an attempt to explore the intersecting dynamic of human rights and weapons control from a postcolonial perspective. It seeks to bring to the fore the contested terrain of human rights discourses within which grand proclamations of “Human Rights” as a “new standard of civilization” are being championed. At the same time in the field of security studies, an effort to rejuvenate “disarmament as humanitarian action” is mobilizing scholars and activists. It is in this context that this article seeks to problematize deployment of specifically human rights–based discourses to address the problem of weapons. In this effort, it encourages scholars and activists to take note of the imperial legacy of human rights–based and civilization-based discourses. It then expresses concern with how these civilizational discourses of differences between the West and the Rest are exploited to encourage a licentious use of human rights language to acquire and maintain weapons by state and nonstate actors. This article then proceeds to express concern with a shift from anthropocentric to anthropomorphic discourses on weapons that threatens to constitute and reinforce a stratified human civilization. These reflections are undertaken to encourage scholars to think more deeply about the pernicious nature of a human rights–based discourse in the context of weapons control. It is an invitation for postcolonial scholarship to think more deeply about the intersecting discourses of human rights and weapons control and its implications for the Global South.
{"title":"Human Rights as a New Standard of Civilization in Weapons Control?","authors":"R. Mathur","doi":"10.1177/0304375418770296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375418770296","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an attempt to explore the intersecting dynamic of human rights and weapons control from a postcolonial perspective. It seeks to bring to the fore the contested terrain of human rights discourses within which grand proclamations of “Human Rights” as a “new standard of civilization” are being championed. At the same time in the field of security studies, an effort to rejuvenate “disarmament as humanitarian action” is mobilizing scholars and activists. It is in this context that this article seeks to problematize deployment of specifically human rights–based discourses to address the problem of weapons. In this effort, it encourages scholars and activists to take note of the imperial legacy of human rights–based and civilization-based discourses. It then expresses concern with how these civilizational discourses of differences between the West and the Rest are exploited to encourage a licentious use of human rights language to acquire and maintain weapons by state and nonstate actors. This article then proceeds to express concern with a shift from anthropocentric to anthropomorphic discourses on weapons that threatens to constitute and reinforce a stratified human civilization. These reflections are undertaken to encourage scholars to think more deeply about the pernicious nature of a human rights–based discourse in the context of weapons control. It is an invitation for postcolonial scholarship to think more deeply about the intersecting discourses of human rights and weapons control and its implications for the Global South.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0304375418770296","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48500242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418770300
Stine Bergersen
In a press conference on July 24, 2014, the director of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) and the Minister of Justice unexpectedly broke the news that Norway was facing an unspecific, but credible threat that terrorists from an “extreme Islamic group” would shortly attack the country. A national terror alert was issued for the first time, followed immediately by exceptional security measures, such as the arming of the usually unarmed police. In the anticipation of an attack, the public was for the first time involved in the counterterrorism efforts by being asked to be vigilant and to report any suspicious behavior. However, there was no attack on Norway, and the alert was called off a few days later without any explicit explanation. As part of the larger context of how risks and threats have been communicated in the past decades, this article describes the materialization of the event and discusses how the announcement and the content of the communications by the authorities were framed in the media coverage of it. Concretely, based on the concept of framing theory, the media coverage surrounding the announcement is considered, and the announcement is discussed via three identified frames emerging from the empirical data. These are discussed against the backdrop of the recent history of Norwegian counterterrorism practices, focusing on the effects and impacts of making such an announcement.
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Pub Date : 2017-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375417736698
Samir Kumar Das
As Irom Sharmila Chanu breaks her sixteen-yearlong fast on August 9, 2016, struggle for peace in India’s Northeast seems to have turned a full circle. On the one hand, her battle against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958—the law that empowers even a noncommissioned army officer to open fire on a civilian and in the process kill her with impunity, that is to say, without ever being tried in a court of law—by all accounts made her the “iron lady” and “the Face of Manipur” to the world. On the other hand, notwithstanding her indefinite fast—widely believed to be emblematic of the “collective moral outrage” against the Act—persistent appeals made by a host of national and international human rights groups, eminent public intellectuals, and the recommendation of the respective Committees in favor of repealing it, the Act remains very much in force in parts of Jammu and Kashmir and in the Northeast even after fifty-eight years of its enactment, resulting in the death of hundreds of civilians. This article seeks to explain the implications of this paradox for peace politics in the region. Why does Sharmila have to take the otherwise painful and albeit difficult decision of breaking her fast even when there is little sign of repealing the Act? Insofar as she takes the difficult decision of breaking her fast, she realizes that her prolonged fast becomes subjected to a variety of technologies of governance: first, by calling for the complete sacrifice of her private life, second by turning her fast into a public spectacle rendering it both “unsuccessful” and necessary—significantly both at the same time—and finally by inculcating in her and in many of us the intense desire of pursuing peace through the established political institutions, particularly electoral institutions.
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Pub Date : 2017-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418761072
Å. Kolås
The standard frame of security studies is to view Northeast India as a site of multiple “ethnic conflicts.” In trying to unravel these conflicts, the focus has remained on the fault lines between the state and its alleged contenders, the region’s multiple nonstate actors. This special issue tries to look at the conflict scenario of Northeast India through a different set of lenses, in an effort to draw the focus away from the usual conflict histories, to direct attention toward the ideas that underpin the construction of Northeast India as a frontier zone and its people as “others,” both internally divided and divided from the Indian mainstream. The “tribal” movements of Northeast India, and the patterns of conflict associated with them, are well researched. What this issue explores is how and why tribal political projects are created and pursued, and how to understand these projects, whether as strategies of resistance and survival, identity politics, or rival projects of extraction and exploitation. What do we find when we look into the enigmatic frontier as a “zone of anomie,” a “sensitive space,” or a parapolitical scene that defies the taken-for-granted dichotomies between the state and nonstate?
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Pub Date : 2017-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0304375418761514
Bhupen Sarmah
One of the major challenges before the “mainstream Indian nationalists” at the dawn of India’s independence was the political integration of the “Northeast” with India envisaged as a nation-state. Some parts of the colonial frontier, such as the Naga Hills, had already witnessed a parallel nationalist discourse with the imagination of sovereignty before India’s independence. With independence, the Indian nation-state project was made difficult by the geopolitical significance of the region, shaped by the experience of the partition, which separated India and Pakistan (East and West), creating a milieu of not-so-favorable international politics. The postcolonial history of the troubled periphery has been marked by an imposed notion of homogeneity and a binary of the nation-state (or the Indian mainstream) and the Northeast. Political theorists have long refuted the notion of national homogeneity. Nevertheless, the dichotomy between the plains and the valley constructed by the colonial logic was and is reinforced by the nation-state ideology, turning the periphery into a cauldron of conflict. This article engages critically with the history of conflict witnessed in the region since independence, against the backdrop of colonial interventions and the integrationist logic of the nation-state. This article argues that the political and developmental strategies, adopted by the Indian state to integrate the region, have led to the perpetuation of conflict in different forms.
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