Dispossession and the Mass Party

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Edwin F. Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Destructive Processes

This chapter argues that Marx and Weber were right to relate party emergence with capitalism and the modern state. But understanding the nature of this relationship requires a 1) rethinking of the unique characteristics of the party as a political-organizational modality and 2) a focus on the destructive processes associated with the ascent of a market economy and a bureaucratic state apparatus. A reading of Marx and Weber through the prism of Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of the party-form and Bourdieu’s insights on political representation moves us in this direction. Capitalism and the modern State transform political organization, as it ceases to be an act of direct presentation to a territorial outsider and becomes an act of re-presentation whereby a specialized intermediary agent (party, union, civil societal organization) articulates private sectoral interests that cut across local communities. This transition from “territorial presentation” to “social sectoral representation” requires two primitive accumulations, and economic and a political one.

American Insecurity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Seth Levine
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
College Tuition ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Care Costs ◽  
Politically Active

Americans today face no shortage of threats to their financial well-being, such as job and retirement insecurity, health care costs, and spiraling college tuition. While one might expect that these concerns would motivate people to become more politically engaged on the issues, this often doesn't happen, and the resulting inaction carries consequences for political debates and public policy. Moving beyond previously studied barriers to political organization, this book sheds light on the public's inaction over economic insecurities by showing that the rhetoric surrounding these issues is actually self-undermining. By their nature, the very arguments intended to mobilize individuals—asking them to devote money or time to politics—remind citizens of their economic fears and personal constraints, leading to undermobilization and nonparticipation. The book explains why the set of people who become politically active on financial insecurity issues is therefore quite narrow. When money is needed, only those who care about the issues but are not personally affected become involved. When time is needed, participation is limited to those not personally affected or those who are personally affected but outside of the labor force with time to spare. The latter explains why it is relatively easy to mobilize retirees on topics that reflect personal financial concerns, such as Social Security and Medicare. In general, however, when political representation requires a large group to make their case, economic insecurity threats are uniquely disadvantaged. Scrutinizing the foundations of political behavior, the book offers a new perspective on collective participation.

scholarly journals Seigneurial governance and the state in late medieval Guelders (14th–16th century)

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Jim van der Meulen
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Central Argument

AbstractThis article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.

Foreign Policy in Field of Crossing Moral and Power

2011 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
K. Gadzhiev
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Strict Control ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Political Governance ◽  
Formal Rules

The article is concentrated on the issues relating to the correlation between morality and professionalism in the foreign policy of the states. The functioning of a modern state apparatus and a system of political governance cannot be imagined without rationally designed, firmly planted and formal rules, without professional policies and strict control mechanisms.

Two Properties, One Land: Law and Space in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (04) ◽  
pp. 807-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Property System ◽  
Level Of Consciousness

If we use the word land to refer to the physical substance, and reserve the word property for the intellectual apparatus that organizes rights to use land, we can say that in colonial New Zealand, the British and the Maori overlaid two dissimilar systems of property on the same land. That difference in legal thought structured each side's perception of what the other was doing, in ways that illustrate unusually clearly the power of law to organize our awareness of phenomena before they reach the level of consciousness. Over the course of the nineteenth century, as the balance of power gradually swung to the side of the British, they were largely able to impose their property system on the Maori. The centrality of property within the thought of both peoples, however, meant that the transformation of Maori into English property rights involved much more than land. Religious belief, engagement with the market economy, political organization—all were bound up in the systems by which both peoples organized property rights in land. To anglicize the Maori property system was to revolutionize Maori life.

scholarly journals Toward local sustainability: Social capital as a community insurance in Kazakhstan

2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652110381
Author(s):  
Yuliya Darmenova ◽  
EunJoo Koo
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Mutual Trust ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Reciprocal Relations ◽  
Local Sustainability ◽  
The Face ◽  
Traditional Sense

This article focuses on how social capital, in the form of trust, reciprocal relations, and networks, has contributed to the sustainability of local communities in Kazakhstan in the face of various political and socioeconomic challenges. Drawing on qualitative data, we provide historical evidence of the persistence of locally derived social capital and investigate the ways in which it contributed to local sustainability in Kazakhstan. We first discuss how people in Kazakhstan have historically built and developed networks, reciprocal relations, and mutual trust under different political and economic institutions, for example, in the form of reciprocal labor aid as part of nomadic culture (e.g., “Asar”) and collective funds (e.g., “Kotel”) during Soviet times. We then offer an in-depth understanding of social capital as a form of insurance for local communities, and how it facilitates socioeconomic interactions in contemporary Kazakh society. This study contributes to the understanding of this traditional sense of trust and communal cooperation, as well as its viability in the context of a market economy.

Secularism: The Golden Lie

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
Graham Ward
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Scientific Atheism

In contemporary rhetoric, secularism, modernity, and atheism are invoked as the end of a linear narrative of historical progress, but with the anthropological insights of Bruno Latour regarding scientific atheism, Graham Ward argues that secularism and modernity are abstract, mythological concepts, a “golden lie” upon which the modern state is built (as in Plato’s Republic). Latour recognized the exclusion of the concept of “God” in scientific investigation, while at the same time scientists raised the level of “fact” to that which is absolutely true (i.e., outside of time and space). In a similar way, the demythologizing project of the Enlightenment sought to exclude religious traditions and history from the modern, secular state, but in the process, it developed a new mythology of the anti- or a-religious that began circa 1500. Instead, the basic concepts of this worldview, such as the “immanent frame,” the “buffered self,” disenchantment, and “exclusive humanism” imply their own falsehood. Even the French laicité has shifted from an antagonism toward religion to an attempted neutrality for the sake of inclusivity and the bureaucratic state.

scholarly journals The Vicissitudes of Representation

Jus Cogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Matteo Mandarini
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Class Composition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
Collective Self

Abstract This article turns to the issue of political representation that I argue is central to all forms of political thought and practice of the modern period. Taking political representation as its object, I argue that its crisis—that comes to a head in the travails of the Weimar Republic—provided the opportunity for forms of neoliberal representation to displace political representation with purportedly “neutral”, non-partisan and thus “fair” representational tools. In contrast, I seek to develop the idea of “self-representation” with a discussion of paths not chosen at Weimar and via Italian operaismo’s reflections on “class composition”, which combines collective self-representation with political organization. Representing each member of a collective to another as it develops epistemic and cartographic tools, it constructs group solidarity, organization and the capacity to act as it reclaims the collectivity alienated in modern political forms of representation and excluded from neoliberal ones.

Borders and Insecurities in Western Flores

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 122-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maribeth Erb
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Eastern Boundary ◽  
The People

Creating and guarding boundaries is one of the pervasive features of modern states. Many boundaries have been contested in the Southeast Asian region between states, and boundaries are always locations of great insecurity for states, and for the people who live on them. The case to be explored in this paper is about boundaries that are not international, but local boundaries between districts within the nation state of Indonesia, in the eastern region of western Flores. The years of political change in Indonesia have created considerable attention to the creation of new boundaries, with the “pemekaran”, or “flowering” of new districts. This has caused the revival of concern over the actual boundaries of western Flores districts, resulting in various extreme instances of boundary contestation and protection. One contestation revived a much older dispute of the eastern boundary of the western Flores district of Manggarai, which dates from the time of the beginning of the Indonesian modern state. In this paper it will be queried what makes internal, domestic boundaries important, including how they are complicated by issues of ethnicity, foreign investment in natural resources, and religion, all of which can create considerable insecurity for the local communities who live near and on these contested borders.

Ruler and state, state and society in Ottoman political thought

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinos Sariyannis
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
State And Society

It can be argued that the late seventeenth century marks the transition of the Ottoman entity into an early modern state, with one of its main features identified as the distinction between the ruler and the state apparatus. The paper aims to explore whether, when and how such a process reflected in contemporary political thought. It analyzes the ways Ottoman elite authors represented society vis-à-vis the sultan; also, the development of the notion of “state” in the same authors and how it came to be considered different from that of the “ruler”.

scholarly journals Muhammadiyah and the Early Statehood Politics of Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Prahasti Suyaman ◽  
Irwan Akib ◽  
Akrim Raihan ◽  
Novelti Novelti
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Missionary Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Politics

This article discusses Muhammadiyah and the statehood politics in Indonesia. Through the literature study method, this article reveals that Muhammadiyah is a social organization that grows and develops in tandem with the socio-cultural and political growth and development in Indonesia. In his journey, Muhammadiyah concentrated more on his social work, but he could not be separated from the correlation with power of politics. The consistency of the non-partisan missionary movement does not reduce the interest of Muhammadiyah activists involved in practical politics. Based on his khittah, Muhammadiyah is not a political organization and will not become a political party. However, with the belief that Islam is a religion that regulates all human life in the world, naturally all matters relating to the world become the fields of Muhammadiyah's work, including matters of state politics. This article underlines that religious modernity can be used as input for political development in the modern state.

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