scholarly journals Sisterhood and affective politics: The CaiRollers mobilising change through roller derby in Egypt

2021 ◽  
pp. 136787792098723
Author(s):  
Laura Rodriguez Castro ◽  
Adele Pavlidis ◽  
Millicent Kennelly ◽  
Erin Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Roller Derby ◽  
Team Members ◽  
A Site

This article narrates the affects and experiences of the CaiRollers, the first and only roller derby team in Egypt. Through visual affective discourse analysis of their Instagram account and interviews with team members, the article addresses the question: What do physical practices such as roller derby ‘do’ in e/affecting and mobilising change? In conversation with feminisms from the Middle East, our analysis highlights how the team’s ‘sisterhood’ is a site of affective politics that transcends the roller derby track. At the same time, a desire to be tough and to embrace risk permeated the CaiRollers discourses. Yet, while the team has established its legitimacy within the transnational roller derby community, we narrate the obstacles they face in Egypt. In sum, we found that the CaiRollers involvement in roller derby was entangled in mobilising change in political movements, gender politics, transnational mobilities and questions of legitimacy and sport.

Going Abroad: Transnational Solicitation and Contention by Ethnopolitical Organizations

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 945-978 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Asal ◽  
Justin Conrad ◽  
Peter White
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Organization Level ◽  
Foreign State ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Minorities At Risk

AbstractExisting literature on contentious political movements has generally focused on domestic political activity. Using the new Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior–Middle East data set (MAROB-ME), which contains organization-level data for 104 ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, we analyze the decision of both violent and nonviolent organizations to engage in political activity transnationally. Among the results, we find that diaspora support is associated with transnational nonviolent protest, whereas foreign state support and domestic repression increase the use of transnational violence. The most robust finding, however, is that participation in the domestic electoral process consistently reduces the likelihood that an organization will engage in any political activity abroad.

Traveling across Racial Borders: TripAdvisor and the Discursive Strategies Businesses Use to Deny Racism

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-531
Author(s):  
Heather M. Dalmage
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Interracial Couples ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Online Platform ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Digital Discourse ◽  
A Site

Travel and leisure activities can bring many rewards, and yet for those deemed “racialized Others,” these same activities can be fraught with anxiety and tension. As in all aspects of society, racism mediates the rewards of travel and leisure. Decisions about when and how to confront racism are central in the lives of those considered racialized Others. Given a wish to de-escalate racist situations and respond later, some individuals are using online platforms to call out racism. Using a digital discourse analysis, the author explores TripAdvisor, as a site and context in which racial confrontation happens. Interracial couples facing discrimination during leisure activities may choose to confront businesses after the fact through an online platform. When businesses respond, they follow a pattern that defensively separates “service” from racism and ultimately denies racism entirely. The author begins with an analysis of the TripAdvisor platform, including the affordances and constraints. Next, the author uses a digital discourse analysis of the review-response interaction. As with other forms of colorblind racism, a close read of the content is needed to highlight racist practices. The author shows that the structure of TripAdvisor, including the quantitative ratings and rankings and written reviews and responses, works to legitimize the platform and build trust across a Eurocentric global community. This sense of community and trust is denied and remains elusive to those suffering as a result of racist abuse.

Cold War, Bottom-up: The 1956 Catholicos Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-166
Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Top Down ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 3 examines the 1956 Catholicos election in Lebanon.While the excitement and success of the repatriation movement was a public relations victory for the USSR supported by local Armenian institutions and assisted by Lebanese and Syrian governments, this election became a site of contestation by Cold War powers and by their state and non-state allies and proxies in the Middle East. This analysis allows us to look at the Cold War in the Middle East not from the top down, through the eyes of Washington or Moscow (or Lebanon’s or Egypt’s state authorities, for that matter) during flash points like the 1958 U.S. intervention in Lebanon or the U.S. and Soviet reactions to the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956. Rather, in that election, Armenians made use of Cold War tensions to designate a leader of the Armenian Church who was seen to suit the community’s interests. That story also expands our understanding of Lebanon’s Armenians: from refugees and outsiders in national politics to true participants, whose own internal politics, moreover, were of interest to Lebanon’s authorities and who by now felt free to invade and use public spaces beyond their own neighborhoods to make political statements.

Empowerment Discourses in Transnational Sporting Contexts: The Case of Sarah Attar, The First Female Saudi Olympian

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulette Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
London Olympics ◽  
Images Of Women ◽  
Regime Of Truth

This article starts with the occasion of the 2012 London Olympics as “The Women’s Olympics” and looks both backward and forward to situate this occasion within the global north’s discourses of global human rights and neoliberal feminism. The global north’s coverage of the 2012 Olympics and Oiselle’s branding campaigns of Sarah Attar acts as data. I use transnational feminist analysis in combination with Foucauldian discourse analysis to trace how the global north’s discourses of human rights and neoliberal feminism travel and operate in transnational sporting contexts. As such, I trace the female athlete’s representation as white, middle-class, and heterosexual as a regime of truth. The discourses of human rights and neoliberal feminism, when networked with commodified images of women from the middle east and the politics of US feminism and the middle east, uncovers the neoliberal feminist cultural logics surrounding the branding of Attar.

scholarly journals Misunderstanding as a resource in interaction

Pragmatics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica S. Robles
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Multimodal Discourse Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Activity Assessment ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
A Site ◽  
A Current

The phenomenon of misunderstanding is a recurrent feature of everyday life – sometimes a source of frustration, sometimes a site of blame. But misunderstandings can also be seen as getting interactants out of (as well as into) trouble. For example, misunderstandings may be produced to deal with disaffiliative implications of ‘not being on the same page,’ and as such they may be deployed as a resource for avoiding trouble. This paper examines misunderstanding as a pragmatic accomplishment, focusing on the uses to which it is put in interactions as a practice for dealing with threats to intersubjectivity: the extent to which persons are aligned in terms of a current referent, activity, assessment, etc. A multimodal discourse analysis of audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring talk inspects moments in which misunderstandings are purported or displayed (rather than overtly invoked) as well as how such misunderstandings are oriented to as simply-repairable references, versus inferential matters more misaligned and potentially fraught. Rather than being a straightforward reflection of an experience of trouble with understanding, misunderstanding may also be collaboratively produced to manage practical challenges to intersubjectivity.

scholarly journals Printed t-shirts in the linguistic landscape

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Unique Mode ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
A Site

Abstract While the printed t-shirt remains a prominent form of communication in our contemporary linguistic landscape, little research to date has examined the semiotics of this unique mode of communication. In response to the interdisciplinary ‘invitation’ from Shohamy and Ben-Rafael (2015), this paper draws on principles and methods from social semiotics (van Leeuwen, 2005) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1989) to explore the meaning-making potential of English words on printed t-shirts. The paper begins by applying Halliday’s concept of mode to the printed t-shirt and then presents a linguistically motivated taxonomy of words on printed t-shirts. In addition to foregrounding the printed t-shirt as a site for future exploration, this paper aims to present a close textual discourse analysis – an examination of the ‘perceived space’ (Malinowski, 2015) – to complement, inform and engage with current trends and methods in linguistic landscape research and pedagogy.

The Transmission of Islamic Political Movements from the Middle East to Indonesia

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 4409-4413
Author(s):  
. Istadiyantha ◽  
Siti Muti’ah Setiawati
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Movements

Love in the Middle East: The contradictions of romance in the Facebook World

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Friedland ◽  
Janet Afary ◽  
Paolo Gardinali ◽  
Cambria Naslund
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Young People ◽  
Mate Selection ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Western World ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Muslim Majority

Romantic love is a social fact in the Muslim world. It is also a gender politics impinging on religious and patriarchal understandings of female modesty and agency. This paper analyzes the rise of love as a basis of mate selection in a number of Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey where we have conducted Web-based anonymous surveys of Facebook users. Young people increasingly want love in their married lives, but they and the communities in which they live remain uncomfortable with the mating practices through which such love has traditionally been achieved in the Western world. The paper explores the religious contradictions and the gender politics of modern heterosexual love.

scholarly journals Reporting on selective voices of ‘resistance’: Secularism, class and ‘Islamist’ rap

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Moreno-Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Modes Of Governance

Since the 2010–11 popular uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), rap music has served commentators to channel stories of disenfranchisement and oppression among the region’s youth. Accounts that portray rappers as significant political actors, however, reproduce narratives of ‘resistance’ that focus on opposition to governance but overlook social inequalities. Further, the case studies of two Moroccan rappers illustrate that commentators value criticisms of social inequalities as long as they are not framed with a religious ethos. Terms such as Islamist rap serve to discredit dissent, proving that when it comes to reporting on Moroccan rap, journalists and academics disregard local expressions of grievance more related to class issues than to modes of governance. Through discourse analysis, open-ended interviews and ethnography (2011–15), this article argues for the urgency of listening to important voices of social and political dissent silenced due to a disregard for class biases.

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