Women’s Digital Activism

2018 ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Annabelle Sreberny
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
The Many ◽  
Social Agendas

One of the many transformations that is taking place across the Middle East and North Africa region is women's engagement with new communications technologies and their increasing involvement in public life. Despite the initial enthusiasms of the uprisings of 2011, the region is now in considerable turmoil and digital developments are only slowly rolling out across the region. Using Mouffe's notion of the “political” as what is put into public contention in a society, the chapter explores how women in various countries across the Middle East are using and appropriating these new communication tools, especially social media, finding their voices and setting new social agendas for action, many of which revolve around issues of the body and female presence in public space.

Feminizing Development: The Political Sociology of Female Tokenism in the Nigerian Project

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-443
Author(s):  
Sylvanus I. Ebohon
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Women Politicians ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Public ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
Women Participation

Abstract This paper interrogates the phenomena of gendered development and gendered opportunity structure in the context of the Nigerian project. On the basis of a body of empirical evidence, male dominance and female tokenism are presented. It is argued that while female participation has recorded steady growth, the emergence of women politicians in the “public face” makes a case for the exceptionality of agendered development in the Nigerian project. It is further argued that the rising profile e of women in the Nigerian ‘public space’ is not only one of the exceptionalities in the global discourse, but that it owes its emergence to post-colonial reform efforts. It is however argued that rising female profile under Goodluck Jonathan in the national executive space marks the rise of top-down approach to feminization of the public space. The paper also points out that the capacity of women to carve autonomous political space within the Nigerian project may be limited by the declining profile of bottom-up approach to female presence in elective offices. The sociological transition from biological femaleness to sociological maleness has engendered the phenomena of ‘female hybridization’ and token radicalism amongst women. The paper concludes with analysis of the sociological roots of de-empowerment located in the growth in women participation.

Semiotics of the Protest

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-49
Author(s):  
Maria Paschalidou
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Street Protest ◽  
A Performance

In the Semiotics of the Protest performed video, I visually examine the key significance of the body and its language for the materialization of the street protest, the vital tool by means of which people reclaim public space and activate it as a political terrain. The video is based on a performance for which I invited a volunteer dancer to “rehearse” public gestures of resistance against oppression. Challenging dominant representations of protestors as “mobs” and protestors’ bodies as irrational and uncontrollable entities, in this performed video, I visually analyse the political demonstration as choreographic tactics executed by bodies which are meaningful and purposeful and which, through their gestures, move forward to social change. Keywords: participation, performed video, Phantasmagoria, politics and aesthetics, protest as choreography

scholarly journals Women of Fes

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Emilio Spadola
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Family Code ◽  
Mega Cities

The city of Fes, the once “bourgeois citadel” (J. Berque’s words) of Moroccoand once the world’s most populous city (1170-80), has in modernity beenunhappily bypassed for coastal trading hubs and global mega-cities. Materialand symbolic elements of Fassi power persist, however, and anthropologistRachel Newcomb’s finely researched and written ethnography identifies them in upper-middle-class women’s gender identity. In so doing, Women ofFes helps the fields of anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and Islamicstudies to illuminate the often-neglected power of class to shape gender in theMuslim Middle East and North Africa, demonstrating, not pointedly, thatclass divides women within as much as across cultures.Newcomb’s book concerns women of, not merely in, Fes, namely, a classof women of “original” Fassi families navigating the social ruins and newopportunities of daily urban life. Its disparate topics – urban rumors, women’sNGOs, reforms of the Moroccan Muslim family code (mudawanah), flexiblekinship, public space, a dépassé lounge singer – shift the book’s centerfrom class to gender and public life. Her skillful identification of class issueswithin the latter, however, gives the book a necessary coherence ...

Demons and dragons

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-147
Author(s):  
John R. Allen ◽  
F. Ben Hodges ◽  
Julian Lindley-French
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Potential Risk ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
European Security ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact

What threat does instability and insecurity across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) pose to European defence? NATO makes much of being a 360-degree alliance. In fact, there often seems little link between the threat faced by Europe’s Eastern, Northern, and Southern states. The nature of the threat is very different. Across MENA social and political instability has worsened with the emergence of state versus anti-state Salafist Jihadism. The West’s humiliation during the Syrian war has enabled Russia to exploit Europe’s loss of already limited influence, whilst the flows of desperate people towards Europe have weakened the political and strategic cohesion of the Allies, as tensions with Turkey grow. The prospect of a major regional-strategic war is ever present but transatlantic cohesion has been undermined by conflict over what to do with Iran and its nuclear programme. Russian and Turkish interference in Libya threatens not only to cut off vital oil supplies to Europe but to further exacerbate the suffering of refugees and migrants. The impact COVID-19 will have on the many fragile states across MENA is unclear but the sheer scale of potential risk, challenges, and threat to European security and defence must end the bonfire of European illusions.

The Breakdown in American Public Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
American Life ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The Many

There is a breakdown in American public life. Our divisions today go well beyond usual partisan differences. Despite the many aspects of American life that are going quite well, including finally reckoning with our national heritage of racial oppression, we are filled with frustration and distrust. Americans suffer from destructive partisanship amounting to political deadlock. Our system cannot work when the political parties refuse to work together. Both sides believe their political opponents want to destroy them. We cannot even agree on the simplest and most obvious facts or turn to common sources of information. We call this the death of truth. These overlapping conditions contribute to widespread anger and despair.

scholarly journals Ana is here: Abjection, class privilege, and the prime minister Ana Brnabic

Sociologija ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-396
Author(s):  
Bojan Bilic
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Political Spectrum

This paper employs the notion of abjection to explore how debates surrounding Ana Brnabic, the first openly lesbian prime minister in Serbia and Eastern Europe, stir affectively lined layers of prejudice across the political spectrum. Drawing upon a range of empirical sources, I argue that the actors engaging in debates about Brnabic?s both private and public life are entangled in a loop of abjection which, while comprising gender, sexuality, ?race?, and the body, reflects strong patriarchal undercurrents as structural features of Serbian politics.

Representing utility and deploying the body

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Spurrett
Keyword(s):  
Functional Activity ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
The Many

Abstract Comprehensive accounts of resource-rational attempts to maximise utility shouldn't ignore the demands of constructing utility representations. This can be onerous when, as in humans, there are many rewarding modalities. Another thing best not ignored is the processing demands of making functional activity out of the many degrees of freedom of a body. The target article is almost silent on both.

Arte ConTexto

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Socialist Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.

3.2 Private Aspects of Public Life: Connecting the Private with Public Space

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed ◽  
Beate Bartlmä ◽  
Ana Daniela Dresler ◽  
Christina Englmann ◽  
Maxi Jager ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Life

Occupy Movement, Religion and Social Formations

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Matt Sheedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.

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