Social and Local Inequalities in Leisure. Adolescents’ Experiences in Their Living Space

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-194
Author(s):  
Isabelle Danic ◽  
Barbara Fontar ◽  
Agnès Grimault-Leprince

Abstract This article analyses how the political-institutional, spatial, social and symbolic dimensions of their living space influence teenagers’ leisure experiences, both separately and in conjunction with one another. We look in particular at how leisure policies for youth in France, as implemented by urban and rural municipalities, influence adolescents’ experience by defining opportunities, and how territorial inequalities combine with social inequalities. In this perspective, the article reports the results of research based on quantitative and qualitative surveys on leisure activities of teenagers living in diverse geographical and political territories, differentiated in terms of their leisure offer and its geographical accessibility. It appears that territorial inequalities in leisure and transport can be accentuated or compensated for by socio-familial resources and the representations that adolescents and their parents have of their living space.

Author(s):  
Patricia Hill Collins

For youth who are Black, Indigenous, female, or poor, coming of age within societies characterized by social inequalities presents special challenges. Yet despite the significance of being young within socially unjust settings, age as a category of analysis remains undertheorized within studies of political activism. This essay therefore draws upon intersectionality and generational analyses as two useful and underutilized approaches for analyzing the political agency of Black youth in the United States with implications for Black youth more globally. Intersectional analyses of race, class, gender, and sexuality as systems of power help explain how and why intersecting oppressions fall more heavily on young people who are multiply disadvantaged within these systems of power. Generational analysis suggests that people who share similar experiences when they are young, especially if such experiences have a direct impact on their lives, develop a generational sensibility that may shape their political consciousness and behavior. Together, intersectionality and generational analyses lay a foundation for examining youth activism as essential to understanding how young people resist intersecting oppressions of racism, heteropatriarchy, class exploitation, and colonialism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 186810342110278
Author(s):  
Inaya Rakhmani ◽  
Muninggar Sri Saraswati

All around the globe, populism has become increasingly prominent in democratic societies in the developed and developing world. Scholars have attributed this rise at a response to the systematic reproduction of social inequalities entwined with processes of neoliberal globalisation, within which all countries are inextricably and dynamically linked. However, to theorise populism properly, we must look at its manifestations in countries other than the West. By taking the case of Indonesia, the third largest democracy and the largest economy in Southeast Asia, this article critically analyses the role of the political campaign industry in mobilising narratives in electoral discourses. We use the Gramscian notion of consent and coercion, in which the shaping of populist narratives relies on mechanisms of persuasion using mass and social media. Such mechanisms allow the transformation of political discourses in conjunction with oligarchic power struggle. Within this struggle, political campaigners narrate the persona of political elites, while cyber armies divide and polarise, to manufacture allegiance and agitation among the majority of young voters as part of a shifting social base. As such, we argue that, together, the narratives – through engineering consent and coercion – construct authoritarian populism that pits two crowds of “the people” against each other, while aligning them with different sections of the “elite.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marchetti

The statue of Glauco that the sea and the storms have disfigured so as to make its appearance more like a ferocious beast than a god, is the famous image with which Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the Discourse on the origin of inequality, questions himself on Human Nature, in a reflection that will have its purpose both in the political project of the Contract and in the pedagogical project of the Emilio. The image serves in fact to reiterate that that deterioration, that ugliness, is only external and that the statue (the man) has remained in its depths beautiful and good, since in him the feeling of piety, of his own and of his remains unchanged. dignity and the vocation to freedom of others. If this were not the case, there would be no possibility for political democracy and democratic education. The growing social inequalities, the artificialization of feelings and relationships due to technology, as well as the spread, after the pandemic, of a sort of mass "claustrophilia", a love for the closed, for one's own, with the consequent rejection of everything that comes from "outside", which is different, foreign or new, seems instead to give credit to Hobbes's thesis, namely that Human Nature is violent and aggressive and that man is always a wolf for the other man. However, it will be the task of the arts, sciences and, above all, of education, to demonstrate that, under the debris left by the salt, Glauco has remained good and that he can rediscover his true essence, the beauty of his original substance.


2009 ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Nadčge Ragaru

- The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it aims to investigate the conditions under which questions of political ethics and corruption have been promoted to the agenda in post-socialist Bulgaria. A particular stress is here placed on the interactions between external pressures (international financial organizations, the European Union…) and domestic players (various NGOs, media and other advocacy networks). Second, the political uses of anti-corruption are analyzed. Far from contributing to a more transparent way of doing politics, since the end of the 1990s the denunciation of corrupt behaviour has indeed turned into one of the most powerful ploys used by ruling elites against their political opponents. Finally, attention is brought to the public receptions of calls for morality in politics. "Corruption" has not become a key word solely because of the widespread existence of corrupt practices in Bulgaria. The notion also gained currency as it became incorporated into private narratives of post-communism. To many average citizens, this terminology offered ways of depicting and denunciating growing social inequalities, the disruption of social ties as well as the increased monetarization of social status associated with the transition to market democracy.


Author(s):  
Charlotte Heyl

In a liberal conception of democracy, courts play an important role in facilitating the rule of law by controlling the abidance to rules and by holding the political branches of government accountable. The power of constitutional review is a crucial element for exercising horizontal accountability. Courts across Africa are vested with the power of constitutional review, and, generally speaking, their independence has substantially increased since the beginning of the 1990s—although African courts enjoy overall less independence than the global average for courts’ independence. Within the African region, the level of judicial independence varies widely, between contexts that rarely allow judicial independence and contexts where courts have more power to challenge the government. Furthermore, across the continent, African courts experience undue interference—which frequently takes place informally. Informal interference can occur through the biased appointments of judges, verbal and physical threats, violent attacks, the payment of bribes, or the ouster of sitting judges. Informal networks—held together by ties based on shared educational trajectories, common leisure activities, religion, kinship relations, or political affiliations—are the channels through which such pressure can be transmitted. Yet judges also can actively build informal networks: namely, with the legal community, civil society, and international donors, so as to insulate themselves against undue interference and to increase institutional legitimacy. Research has shown that the agency of judges and courts in signaling impartial decision-making, as well as in reaching out to society, is crucial to constructing legitimacy in the African context. In contrast, the explanatory power of electoral competition as an incentive for power holders to support judicial independence is not straightforward in the context of Africa’s political regimes, where the prospect of losing office is associated with financial, and in some cases even physical, insecurity. However, research on judicial politics in Africa is still only preliminary, because the field requires more comparative studies in order to fully reveal the political repercussions on Africa’s judiciaries as well as to delineate the scope conditions of the prominent theories explaining judicial independence.


Author(s):  
Peter M. Sanchez ◽  
David Doherty ◽  
Kirstie Lynn Dobbs

Abstract Is darker skin pigmentation associated with less favorable social and political outcomes in Latin America? We leverage data from 18 Latin American countries across multiple survey waves to demonstrate the robust and potent negative relationship between the darkness of skin tone and socio-economic status. Then we examine the relationship between skin color and attitudes toward the political system. In spite of our substantial sample size, we find little support for the expectation that respondents with darker skin are less favorably disposed toward the political system—indeed, on balance, our findings run counter to this expectation. Our findings suggest that the socio-economic “pigmentocracy” that pervades the region does not necessarily translate into pronounced differences in attitudes about the political system. This finding casts some doubt on the expectation that social inequalities are likely to destabilize governments or undermine their legitimacy.


2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 411-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dixon ◽  
Mark Levine ◽  
Steve Reicher ◽  
Kevin Durrheim

AbstractFor most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and “inclusive” (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities.These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality?


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 172396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florin-Constantin Mihai

The lack of proper waste collection systems leads to plastic pollution in rivers in proximity to rural communities. This environmental threat is more widespread among mountain communities which are prone to frequent flash floods during the warm season. This paper estimates the amounts of plastic bottles dumped into the Izvoru Muntelui lake by upstream rural communities. The plastic pollution dimension between seasonal floods which affected the Bistrita catchment area during 2005–2012 is examined. The floods dumped over 290 tonnes of plastic bottles into the lake. Various scenarios are tested in order to explain each amount of plastic waste collected by local authorities during sanitation activities. The results show that rural municipalities are responsible for 85.51% of total plastic bottles collected during 2005–2010. The source of plastic pollution is mainly local. The major floods of July 2008 and June 2010 collected most of the plastic bottles scattered across the Bistrita river catchment (56 villages) and dumped them into the lake. These comparisons validate the proposed method as a reliable tool in the assessment process of river plastic pollution, which may also be applied in other geographical areas. Tourism and leisure activities are also found to be responsible for plastic pollution in the study area. A new regional integrated waste management system should improve the waste collection services across rural municipalities at the county level when it is fully operational. This paper demonstrates that rural communities are significant contributors of plastics into water bodies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Molina

Based on a narrative of the recent history of postcolonial feminism within and outside the Swedish academic world, this article discusses the controversial relationship between feminism and politics. Installing a socialist inspired perspective on intersectionality in Swedish feminist debates and in gender research has been a hard task for postcolonial feminists in a society whose self-imagination excludes the recognition of racism as a fundamental component of the national identity. Moreover, as the country moves rapidly towards a neoliberalization of the former Keynesian Swedish welfare state, racism and homo-nationalism spreads out and permeates the political sphere and state institutions. The author emphasizes the importance for postcolonial feminists to continuously highlight the chasm that exists between neoliberal understandings of gender equality, which are not meant to eradicate structural class, gender, racial or other social inequalities, and those emanating from socialist and anti-racist feministic ontologies.


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