scholarly journals SEX CAN KILL: GENDER INVERSION AND THE POLITICS OF SUBVERSION IN ARISTOPHANES’ ECCLESIAZVSAE

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 528-544
Author(s):  
Natalia Tsoumpra
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Female Leadership ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Gender Inversion

Scholarship on Ecclesiazusae (as on Wealth) has been largely divided between those who are in favour of a fantastical/positive reading of the play and view it as a celebration of comic energy void of serious social critique, and those who argue for an ironic/satirical interpretation and deem Praxagora's plan as a spectacular failure. The unsuccessful realization of the new political programme is often regarded as a commentary on the state of democracy at the time. Other views are more affirmative of the democratic values of the play: Scholtz claims that the women in Ecclesiazusae succeed into putting into action Lysistrata's dream of a cohesive civic order, although, according to him, the play does not present ‘an unambiguously pro or contra viewpoint vis-à-vis gynaecocratic communalism’. Rothwell believes that the satire is directed against the greedy dēmos rather than against Praxagora's plan. He sees the persuasion exercised by women as ‘a benevolent and indispensable force in democracy’, and argues that the women of Ecclesiazusae, like the women in Lysistrata, strive to assure the continuity of the community; in his view, the play is about ‘the potential advantages of leadership in building a community’. Moodie also outright rejects a threatening or pessimistic reading, and makes the case that the audience is encouraged to take the women seriously as political actors owing to their unusual interaction with the audience and the rupture of dramatic illusion, which creates a rapport between the women and the audience. If the play is subversive, it is so only in its ‘non-satirical presentation of female leadership’.

Islamists between revolution and the state: an epilogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Ghani Imad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
New Type ◽  
Political Realities

The problematic addressed in this article is the challenge initiated by the Arab revolutions to reform the Arab political system in such a way as to facilitate the incorporation of ‘democracy’ at the core of its structure. Given the profound repercussions, this issue has become the most serious matter facing the forces of change in the Arab world today; meanwhile, it forms the most prominent challenge and the most difficult test confronting Islamists. The Islamist phenomenon is not an alien implant that descended upon us from another planet beyond the social context or manifestations of history. Thus it cannot but be an expression of political, cultural, and social needs and crises. Over the years this phenomenon has presented, through its discourse, an ideological logic that falls within the context of ‘advocacy’; however, today Islamists find themselves in office, and in a new context that requires them to produce a new type of discourse that pertains to the context of a ‘state’. Political participation ‘tames’ ideology and pushes political actors to rationalize their discourse in the face of daily political realities and the necessity of achievement. The logic of advocacy differs from that of the state: in the case of advocacy, ideology represents an enriching asset, whereas in the case of the state, it constitutes a heavy burden. This is one reason why so much discourse exists within religious jurisprudence related to interest or necessity or balancing outcomes. This article forms an epilogue to the series of articles on religion and the state published in previous issues of this journal. It adopts the methodologies of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘case studies’ in an attempt to examine the arguments presented by Islamists under pressure from the opposition. It analyses the experiences, and the constraints, that inhibit the production of a ‘model’, and monitors the development of the discourse, its structure, and transformations between advocacy, revolution and the state.

Re-Territorialising Governance and the State

2017 ◽  
pp. 173-213
Author(s):  
Shefali Virkar
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
The State ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
New Information ◽  
Central Case ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Government ◽  
Platform System

Attracted by the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), political actors across the world have adopted computer-based systems for use in government as a means of reforming inefficiencies in public administration. This book chapter critically examines the convergent use of the new digital technologies and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) within the reform of government administration, through the in-depth examination of a central case study focused around a collaboration between the government of the Indian state of Karnataka and the non-profit eGovernments Foundation, from 2002 to 2006; a partnership which sought to reform existing methods of property taxation via the establishment of an online platform-system across the municipalities of 56 towns and cities within the state. The research analyses prevailing actor behaviour and interactions, their impact on the interplay of local contingencies and external influences shaping project implementation, and the disjunctions in these relationships which inhibit the effective exploitation of ICTs within the given context.

State, Masculinity, and the Aestheticization of Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 394-416
Author(s):  
Erol Subasi ◽  
Selda Tunc Subasi
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Law System ◽  
Gender Based

Violence is a fundamental bio-sociological phenomenon. It can take many forms including psychological, emotional, economic, gender-based, religious, cultural, and political. The latter is primarily associated with the state. Historically, all states exercised violence in accordance with their law. Thus, law is the codification of violence. State and violence are also associated with masculinity, which is not fixed biological but rather a flexible sociological category. Masculinity is concretized in specific patterns of behaviors. In this perspective, the present study analyzes the famous Turkish TV Series, Behzat Ç: An Ankara Detective Story. It argues that since the Turkish law system could not function of its violence due to the struggles of various socio-political actors within the state, the protagonist, Behzat, aestheticizes and mimics state violence through his masculine performances. That is, state violence is materialized in the masculinity of Behzat who by resorting to violence brings the justice that the state fails to provide.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The State ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Western Democracies

In addition to summarizing the book’s main themes as described, this Introduction places special emphasis on connecting the problem animating the book—the apparent incapacity of contemporary parties to mediate between citizens and the state—to current political developments in established Western democracies, showing that the issues the book addresses are not only of academic interest but also directly relevant to ongoing public debates about the state and health of representative democracy. Chief amongst the themes foregrounded here is the rise of so-called ‘populist’ parties on the left and right of the political spectrum, as well as the re-branding of established political actors as ‘movements’ (think, e.g. of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche). These phenomena are interpreted as part of a larger ‘revolt against intermediary bodies’—meaning first and foremost a rebellion against political parties. The Introduction suggests that this ‘revolt’ brings with it only a temporary shift in how representative politics looks, without actually reversing the disconnect between parties and voters or compelling established political parties to give up their privileges and de-colonize the institutions of the state. This argument sets the stage for the book’s core contention that more thought has to be put into finding ways to reconnect political parties with society.

Who is the state? Infrastructural power and everyday water governance in Delhi

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965441989792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaffa Truelove
Keyword(s):  
Water Governance ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
State Infrastructural Power ◽  
Indian Cities ◽  
Infrastructural Power

In Indian cities, a variety of state and non-state political actors and institutions play a role in regulating infrastructures in the everyday. Anthropological approaches to the everyday state have demonstrated how residents experience and discursively construct the state in relation to key services and amenities. However, less is known and theorized regarding how city-dwellers and public authorities understand and experience political space and power related to urban infrastructure that includes a variety of actors operating in tandem with, or even outside the bureaucracies and purview of, the state. This article partially addresses this lacuna through ethnographic research on (1) residents’ experiences and narrations of the everyday infrastructural governance of water and (2) the practices of key political actors who engage in regulating urban water infrastructures in Delhi’s neighborhoods. This research demonstrates that political actors’ and residents’ narratives and practices related to the infrastructural governance of water sharply contest both singular and dichotomous (state/non-state) readings of state power, instead revealing nuanced and situated understandings of hybrid and negotiated forms of “infrastructural power.” In particular, the practices and narratives of both residents and political authorities bring attention to the ways social and political power is decentered in the everyday and the porosity of the institutions of everyday infrastructural governance. My findings show the complex ways that infrastructures are tied to differing experiences, understandings, and articulations of power in relation to urban environments.

Toward the Worker State, or Working for the State? Reorganization of Political Antagonisms in the Brazilian Amazon

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Baletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Brazilian Amazon ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Dominant Logic ◽  
Extractive Reserve ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Creation

The institutionalization of the Brazilian Workers’ Party has given rise to new tensions among emerging political actors, historic social movement mediator organizations, and the state. An analysis of the differences in strategies and practices between the Movement in Defense of Renascer and the Prainha Rural Worker’s Movement that emerged during the creation of the Renascer Extractive Reserve in the Lower Amazon highlights the fact that the movement’s emancipatory impulses indicate a break with the politics-as-usual of the union and the Workers’ Party more broadly. An examination of union political discourses and practices that seek to fold these emancipatory impulses back into the dominant logic indicates that the union continues to perform the work of the state—albeit a reconstituted one—both institutionally and effectively. A institucionalização do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) no Brasil tem criado novas tensões entre atores políticos emergentes, organizações mediadoras dos movimentos sociais históricos e o Estado. Uma análise das diferenças entre o Movimento em Defesa do Renascer e o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais da Prainha, na Baixa Amazônia, enfatiza o fato de que os impulsos emancipatórios do movimento indicam um rompimento com os hábitos políticos de sindicatos e do Partido dos Trabalhadores de um modo geral. Um exame dos discursos políticos sindicais e das práticas que buscam a contenção desses impulsos emancipatórios, e tentam restaurá-los à lógica dominante, indica que o sindicato continua a desempenhar o trabalho do Estado—mesmo que reconstituído—tanto institucionalmente quanto efetivamente.

How Politics and Institutions Shape Poverty and Inequality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brady ◽  
Agnes Blome ◽  
Hanna Kleider
Keyword(s):  
Labor Unions ◽  
State Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
Key Concepts

This article explores the influence of politics and institutions on poverty and inequality. It first considers the general contention that poverty is shaped by the combination of power resources and institutions. On one hand, scholars in the power resources tradition have emphasized the role of class-based collective political actors for mobilizing “power resources” in the state and economy. On the other hand, institutionalists have highlighted the role of formal rules and regulations. The article goes on to discuss the theoretical arguments of power resources theory and the evidence for key power resources (that is, collective political actors like labor unions and parties). It also reviews institutional explanations, focusing on the key concepts and theories and as well as the evidence linking the most salient institutions to poverty. Finally, it examines how state policy influences poverty and presents several challenges for future research.

Counting Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
History Of

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.

scholarly journals ‘Lean on me': Sifarish, mediation & the digitisation of state bureaucracies in India

Ethnography ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146613812094075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Distribution Systems ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Indian City

Through an ethnographic focus on Muslim neighbourhoods in a North Indian city, this article traces the effects of increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision in India by examining the implications for relations between the state, low-level political actors and local populaces. The article explores the practice of sifarish (leaning on someone to get something done) which, it is argued, cannot be seen within simplistic rubrics of ‘corruption’ but instead comprises a socially embedded ethical continuum. With one of the stated aims of digitisation being the displacing of informal mediation, the ethnographic material illuminates the efforts of low-level political actors to navigate emerging digital infrastructures. Digitisation, however, does not end mediation and carries with it ideological, political and economic interests. This, the article argues, enables state/people spaces of mediation to be commodified and marketized and further cements processes of marginalisation experienced by India’s Muslim minority.

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