{"title":"Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Nicholas Xenos about Critical Theory, Democratic Politics, and the Problems with Patriotism","authors":"Kevin Henderson","doi":"10.1086/728032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"29 10","pages":"187 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139266994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Conceptual disagreement has been recognized as a key feature of language since time immemorial. Yet, no attempt has been made to measure the degree of conceptual disagreement that exists or to compile a list of concepts identified as essentially contested. Accordingly, it is unclear how one might distinguish contested from uncontested concepts or test propositions about the causes of contestation. This research note begins by introducing an approach to measuring conceptual contestation within social science. Next, we explore factors that may help to explain variation in conceptual contestation. We find that the characteristics of concepts—their value, abstraction, and normativity—explain most of the variability in conceptual contestation.
{"title":"Conceptual Contestation: An Empirical Approach","authors":"J. Gerring, L. Cojocaru","doi":"10.1086/727976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727976","url":null,"abstract":"Conceptual disagreement has been recognized as a key feature of language since time immemorial. Yet, no attempt has been made to measure the degree of conceptual disagreement that exists or to compile a list of concepts identified as essentially contested. Accordingly, it is unclear how one might distinguish contested from uncontested concepts or test propositions about the causes of contestation. This research note begins by introducing an approach to measuring conceptual contestation within social science. Next, we explore factors that may help to explain variation in conceptual contestation. We find that the characteristics of concepts—their value, abstraction, and normativity—explain most of the variability in conceptual contestation.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"169 1","pages":"7 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139268249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While sustained public attention is often associated with the politicization of an issue, this paper argues that certain dominant strands of public discourse in relation to animal advocacy in fact serve to depoliticize the movement. Public discussion often equates animal advocacy with veganism, with the latter typically framed or understood as an individual’s dietary or lifestyle choice. Furthermore, animal activists are often associated with criminal, or even terrorist, behavior—as was highlighted when the Australian Prime Minister labelled animal activists as “green-collared criminals” in the wake of a public protest. In this paper, the implications of these two public narratives about animal activism is discussed with reference to two examples from Australia: the media coverage of a day of coordinated protests that took place on April 8, 2019, and the New South Wales state parliamentary debates surrounding the Right to Farm Bill 2019. By developing a multi-dimensional conceptual analysis of (de)politicization, this paper argues that the “veganization” (as a form of “issue-privatization”) and criminalization of animal activists in public discourse are both forms of depoliticization, in that they frame activists’ messages as, respectively, either more appropriately belonging within the private sphere of personal choice, or as not related to the public good at all. I conclude that to avoid the delegitimization that these discursive processes may entail, animal advocates need to develop counter-narratives that emphasize how their claims can support the strengthening of existing democratic institutions.
{"title":"Vegans and “Green-Collared Criminals”: the Depoliticization of Animal Advocacy in Public Discourse","authors":"Serrin Rutledge-Prior","doi":"10.1086/727840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727840","url":null,"abstract":"While sustained public attention is often associated with the politicization of an issue, this paper argues that certain dominant strands of public discourse in relation to animal advocacy in fact serve to depoliticize the movement. Public discussion often equates animal advocacy with veganism, with the latter typically framed or understood as an individual’s dietary or lifestyle choice. Furthermore, animal activists are often associated with criminal, or even terrorist, behavior—as was highlighted when the Australian Prime Minister labelled animal activists as “green-collared criminals” in the wake of a public protest. In this paper, the implications of these two public narratives about animal activism is discussed with reference to two examples from Australia: the media coverage of a day of coordinated protests that took place on April 8, 2019, and the New South Wales state parliamentary debates surrounding the Right to Farm Bill 2019. By developing a multi-dimensional conceptual analysis of (de)politicization, this paper argues that the “veganization” (as a form of “issue-privatization”) and criminalization of animal activists in public discourse are both forms of depoliticization, in that they frame activists’ messages as, respectively, either more appropriately belonging within the private sphere of personal choice, or as not related to the public good at all. I conclude that to avoid the delegitimization that these discursive processes may entail, animal advocates need to develop counter-narratives that emphasize how their claims can support the strengthening of existing democratic institutions.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"69 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134900755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Treaty as De-Fetishizing Critique: A Social Theory of Treaty Interpretation","authors":"Corey Snelgrove","doi":"10.1086/727910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727910","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"30 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134991135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper develops a critical normative analysis of charter schools. It categorizes and evaluates the main arguments in defense of charters: market competition, improved learning outcomes, autonomy and innovation, and their potential to function as “counterpublics.” After finding each argument wanting, the paper proposes a tripartite critique of charters based on (i) their deleterious effects on social solidarity, (ii) the procedural injustice involved in access, and (iii) their substantively unjust outcomes. We show how charter schools undermine social and political solidarity by fragmenting communities into more homogenous subsets. Although they purport to be equally open to all, charters covertly rely on morally arbitrary characteristics such as class, race, and disability in admissions. Finally, we argue that they unfairly reduce the quality of education for some students, thus resulting in substantively unjust outcomes.
{"title":"Revoke the Charters: A Critical Reevaluation of Charter Schools","authors":"Jeremy Kingston Cynamon, Sonia Maria Pavel","doi":"10.1086/727906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727906","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a critical normative analysis of charter schools. It categorizes and evaluates the main arguments in defense of charters: market competition, improved learning outcomes, autonomy and innovation, and their potential to function as “counterpublics.” After finding each argument wanting, the paper proposes a tripartite critique of charters based on (i) their deleterious effects on social solidarity, (ii) the procedural injustice involved in access, and (iii) their substantively unjust outcomes. We show how charter schools undermine social and political solidarity by fragmenting communities into more homogenous subsets. Although they purport to be equally open to all, charters covertly rely on morally arbitrary characteristics such as class, race, and disability in admissions. Finally, we argue that they unfairly reduce the quality of education for some students, thus resulting in substantively unjust outcomes.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"67 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134901437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay examines the relationship between democracy and the unconscious. It does so by understanding democracy through the repressed desire for shared power by a collective actor that has episodically realized itself, in ways that haunt political languages, practices, and aspirations. Democratic flourishing rests upon erotic practices through which the demos transgressively transforms politics by embracing what we refer to as democratic narcissism. Democratic decline and impasse are symptomatic of repressed desires for power that have required the people’s abjection rather than coalescing into a self-affirming narcissism of the demos.
{"title":"Democracy and the Unconscious","authors":"Ali Aslam, David McIvor, Joel Schlosser","doi":"10.1086/727908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727908","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the relationship between democracy and the unconscious. It does so by understanding democracy through the repressed desire for shared power by a collective actor that has episodically realized itself, in ways that haunt political languages, practices, and aspirations. Democratic flourishing rests upon erotic practices through which the demos transgressively transforms politics by embracing what we refer to as democratic narcissism. Democratic decline and impasse are symptomatic of repressed desires for power that have required the people’s abjection rather than coalescing into a self-affirming narcissism of the demos.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"70 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134900892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oaths that (un)Bind: Recovering the Furies’ Political Voice in Aeschylus’s <i>Oresteia</i>","authors":"Agatha A. Slupek","doi":"10.1086/727960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727960","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"72 19","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134901297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay investigates Herbert Marcuse’s concept of play: a collective, worldly form of solidarity. To do so, I propose that we take Marcuse’s 1955 Eros and Civilization as an occasion to rethink the affective commitments of critical theory by tracing the problem-space of his encounter with play and the critique of opposition that he consequently develops. This text on the social psychology of postwar liberal democracy repeatedly turns to play as a category of collective agency, distinct from the categories of contradiction that have animated critical theory and Marxist political theory more generally. For Marcuse, the historical circumstances of capitalist culture in the postwar period makes it difficult to see the “paralysis of criticism” and a “society without opposition” as anything but two symptoms of the same pathological commitment to negativity over solidarity. By examining Marcuse’s concept of play through his critique of opposition, this article reconstructs an alternative vision of critical theory and practice. Rather than refer to a revolutionary overturning of reality, or the wholesale “transformation of labor,” Marcuse doubles down on play’s character as work and consequently enables us to understand that solidarity is neither totally orderable nor totally spontaneous, and never quite conforms to the logic of opposition. It only ever emerges out of play’s suspension and supposition of reality. In short, when Marcuse wonders if there doesn’t exist such a thing as play, he is wondering if there doesn’t exist such a thing as democracy.
{"title":"Play, Work, and Marcuse’s Critique of Opposition","authors":"Alexander Diones","doi":"10.1086/727842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/727842","url":null,"abstract":"This essay investigates Herbert Marcuse’s concept of play: a collective, worldly form of solidarity. To do so, I propose that we take Marcuse’s 1955 Eros and Civilization as an occasion to rethink the affective commitments of critical theory by tracing the problem-space of his encounter with play and the critique of opposition that he consequently develops. This text on the social psychology of postwar liberal democracy repeatedly turns to play as a category of collective agency, distinct from the categories of contradiction that have animated critical theory and Marxist political theory more generally. For Marcuse, the historical circumstances of capitalist culture in the postwar period makes it difficult to see the “paralysis of criticism” and a “society without opposition” as anything but two symptoms of the same pathological commitment to negativity over solidarity. By examining Marcuse’s concept of play through his critique of opposition, this article reconstructs an alternative vision of critical theory and practice. Rather than refer to a revolutionary overturning of reality, or the wholesale “transformation of labor,” Marcuse doubles down on play’s character as work and consequently enables us to understand that solidarity is neither totally orderable nor totally spontaneous, and never quite conforms to the logic of opposition. It only ever emerges out of play’s suspension and supposition of reality. In short, when Marcuse wonders if there doesn’t exist such a thing as play, he is wondering if there doesn’t exist such a thing as democracy.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"51 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134901320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：