Insecurity as confinement: The entrenched politics of staying put in Delhi and Mumbai

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liza Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis

A growing literature on contested urban politics has revealed the political agency of seemingly marginal urban residents, including those experiencing the threat of eviction. Yet with much of this work highlighting single instances of successful resistance, the agency of informal urbanites can be overstated and much of what is understood as resistance may actually be confinement. This article addresses this issue by situating an ethnographic analysis of residential evictions in Delhi and Mumbai in historical perspective. Analyzing the character of insecurity since the 1950s, it demonstrates that historically rooted antagonisms and mobilized responses to insecurity have produced political stalemate. The comparative analysis reveals that while evictions in Delhi and Mumbai today occur in places with different histories and characters of insecurity, ongoing contestations between residents, activists, and local government in both cities have produced similar conditions of confinement.

Police Department and Slavophil Political Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Lyubov V. Ulyanova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Russian Empire

The article analyzes the political discourse of the officials of the main political surveillance structure, – the Police Department, – in the period of 1880s (organization of the Department) and until October, 1905, when the Western-type Constitution project finally prevailed. The comparative analysis of the conceptual instruments (“Constitutionalists”, “Oppositionists”, “Radicals”, “Liberals”) typically used in the Police Department allows one to come o the conclusion that the leaders of the Russian empire political police did not follow the “reactionary and protective” discourse, did not share its postulates, but preferred the moderate-liberal-conservative path of political development. Along with that, the Police Department also demonstrated loyal attitude to zemsky administration and zemsky figures, covert criticism of “bureaucratic mediastinum”, the tendency to come to an agreement with public figures through personal negotiations, intentional omittance of reactionary and protective repressive measures in preserving autocracy. All this allows to come to the conclusion that the officials of the Police Department shares Slavophil public and political doctrine.

ROUPAS COMO CORPOS: O AGENCIAMENTO POLÍTICO DO VESTUÁRIO POR CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI / Clothes as bodies: the political agency of clothing by Christian Boltanski

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Angélica Adverse
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Political Experience

O artigo aborda o agenciamento das roupas no trabalho do artista Christian Boltanski. Partindo da dimensão do poder dos corpos têxteis, analisaremos como as roupas investem-se das palavras emudecidas dos corpos ausentes, constituindo-se como alegoria do testemunho e do documento histórico. A ideia central é pensar como as roupas explicitam a aniquilação humana provocada pelos regimes políticos totalitários. Analisaremos como as instalações Prendre la Parole (2005) e Personnes(2010) desvelam a presença-ausência da vida-morte na experiência política do discurso têxtil.  Palavras-chave: Roupas; Corpos; Agenciamento; Política; Memória.AbstractThe article addresses the agency of clothes in the work of the artist Christian Boltanski. Starting from the dimension of the power of the textile bodies, we will analyze how the clothes invest themselves with the muted words of the absent bodies, constituting themselves as an allegory of the testimony and of the historical document. The central idea is to think about how clothes make explicit human annihilation brought about by totalitarian political regimes. We will analyze how the installations Prendre la Parole (2005) and Personnes (2010) reveal the presence-absence of life-death in the political experience of textile discourse.Keywords: Clothes; Bodies; Agency; Politics; Memory. 

Institutionalizing Soviet Islam, 1944‒1958

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Tasar
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Muslim Communities

This chapter focuses on the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (CARC), created by Stalin in 1944 in order to supervise all officially recognized religions in the USSR with the exception of Russian Orthodox Christianity. CARC vigorously promoted an interpretation of Stalin’s 1943‒44 religious reforms that stressed moderation toward religion and the sanctity of freedom of conscience. As a result of this posture, CARC invested heavily in SADUM’s right to control Muslim communities and enjoy autonomy from local government authorities. It also began to sift through the maze of Central Asian Islamic practices in order to build a vision of a tolerable “Soviet Islam.” Thanks largely to CARC, the 1950s ended up being the most relaxed decade in terms of Soviet pressure on Islam.

Traditionalism and politics: A case study of Northern Nigeria

1967 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. O. Dudley
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
High Time ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
The North ◽  
The Right

In the debate on the Native Authority (Amendment) Law of 1955, the late Premier of the North, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, replying to the demand that ‘it is high time in the development of local government systems in this Region that obsolete and undemocratic ways of appointing Emirs’ Councils should close’, commented that ‘the right traditions that we have gone away from are the cutting off of the hands of thieves, and that has caused a lot of thieving in this country. Why should we not be cutting (off) the hands of thieves in order to reduce thieving? That is logical and it is lawful in our tradition and custom here.’ This could be read as a defence against social change, a recrudescence of ‘barbarism’ after the inroads of pax Britannica, and a plea for the retention of the status quo and the entrenched privilege of the political elite.

Political Science: Seeing Like a Subversive Social Scientist

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-437
Author(s):  
Meredith L. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Democracy

Much of the work of political science revolves around institutions—the structures through which politics happens. Leaders enter the frame, of course, but often as institutions in human form: presidents, premiers, populists, and mobilizers who serve to channel and direct who does what and what they do, much like an agency or law. We might trace this pseudo-structural, largely mechanical reading of human agency to political scientists of an earlier era: the behavioralists of the 1950s and 1960s. James C. Scott began his career as just such a scholar. For his dissertation-turned-book, Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the Beliefs of an Elite, Scott surveyed a gaggle of Malaysian bureaucrats to examine, effectively, the extent to which their values and assumptions supported or subverted the new democracy they served. Although itself fairly prosaic, that work foreshadows the political grime and games that soon pulled Scott in more promising directions theoretically, whether scrutinizing Southeast Asia or global patterns: disentangling structure from norms, finding agency around the margins of class and state, and rethinking how power looks and functions.

scholarly journals The political hourglass: opportunistic behavior in local government policy decisions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Emilio J. de la Higuera-Molina ◽  
Marc Esteve ◽  
Ana M. Plata-Díaz ◽  
José L. Zafra-Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Opportunistic Behavior ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Local Government Policy
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