scholarly journals The Discipline of Happiness: The Foucauldian Use of the “Positive Energy” Discourse in China’s Ideological Works

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-225
Author(s):  
Zifeng Chen ◽  
Clyde Yicheng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
The State ◽  
Positive Energy ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Online Ethnography ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Public Expression ◽  
And Control

One important question about ideological works in China concerns the tension between mobilisation (encouraging public expression) and control (limiting public expression). Recently Xi Jinping’s administration has doubled down on both strategies. To study the rationale of this seemingly self-contradictory move, the authors examine the recently prominent ideological discourse of “positive energy.” Through a combination of online ethnography and discourse analysis using Foucauldian methods, we find that the discourse borrows and evolves from previous ideological works, but most importantly and distinguishably features a more dispersive, rather than centralised power structure. It penetrates popular culture and private lives, and by doing so disciplines people’s subjectivities, rather than only aiming at top-down persuasion or control. The logic of “positive energy” produces self-disciplined docile subjects, and quietly resolves the tension between mobilisation and control by having subjects internalise the interests of the state as their own good.

scholarly journals CREATIVITY AS NEOLIBERAL SELF-GOVERNANCE

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 593-603
Author(s):  
Jakub Barszczewski
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Far East ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Control

The purpose of this article is to analyze the problem of non-professional creativity in contemporary self-help literature. Creativity, an element of work organization in the post-Fordist era, has been the subject of many critical analyses. I focus on creativity as it appears in everyday life, with the support of an examination of self-help handbooks that refer to far-east traditions, at the same time being critical of the Western lifestyle. Self-help literature is viewed here as a tool aiding the neoliberal governmentality of society. I am most of all interested in how contemporary discourse on non-professional creativity promotes technologies of autonomy aimed at the production of responsible and self-sufficient individuals. I argue that creativity is today a key mechanism of governance. It is not limited to the professional sphere but is playing an increasing role in our private lives. It is used to produce more elusive and flexible forms of self-governance than more openly repressive forms of power (based on top-down order and control).

Lifting the Veil

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Scott Pittman
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
State Government ◽  
The State ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Hiring And Firing ◽  
And Control ◽  
California Schools

The story of anti-communism in California schools is a tale well and often told. But few scholars have appreciated the important role played by private surveillance networks. This article examines how privately funded and run investigations shaped the state government’s pursuit of leftist educators. The previously-secret papers of Major General Ralph H. Van Deman, which were opened to researchers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., only a few years ago, show that the general operated a private spy network out of San Diego and fed information to military, federal, and state government agencies. Moreover, he taught the state government’s chief anti-communist bureaucrat, Richard E. Combs, how to recruit informants and monitor and control subversives. The case of the suspicious death of one University of California, Los Angeles student – a student that the anti-communists claimed had been “scared to death” by the Reds – shows the extent of the collaboration between Combs and Van Deman. It further illustrates how they conspired to promote fear of communism, influence hiring and firing of University of California faculty, and punish those educators who did not support their project. Although it was rarely successful, Combs’ and Van Deman’s coordinated campaign reveals a story of public-private anticommunist collaboration in California that has been largely forgotten. Because Van Deman’s files are now finally open to researchers, Californians can gain a much more complete understanding of their state bureaucracy’s role in the Red Scare purges of California educators.

Analysis of the horizontal structure of a measurement and control geodetic network based on entropy

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Mrówczyńska
Keyword(s):  
Geodetic Network ◽  
The State ◽  
Observation System ◽  
Optimum Number ◽  
Optimum Structure ◽  
Horizontal Structure ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Control ◽  
Measurement And Control ◽  
Horizontal Displacements

Abstract The paper attempts to determine an optimum structure of a directional measurement and control network intended for investigating horizontal displacements. For this purpose it uses the notion of entropy as a logarithmical measure of probability of the state of a particular observation system. An optimum number of observations results from the difference of the entropy of the vector of parameters ΔHX̂ (x)corresponding to one extra observation. An increment of entropy interpreted as an increment of the amount of information about the state of the system determines the adoption or rejection of another extra observation to be carried out.

The Threats of Ukraine Financial Security: Identification and Systemization

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Oleksandra Maslii ◽  
Andrii Maksymenko ◽  
Svitlana Onyshchenko
Keyword(s):  
Financial Stability ◽  
System Development ◽  
Financial System ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Financial Security ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Development Indicators ◽  
Security Indicators ◽  
And Control

Place of monitoring and control of risks of financial stability of the state in the system of ensuring financial security of the state was substantiated. Methods of identifying threats to Ukraine's financial security through the current and strategic analysis of financial system development indicators were considered. Tendencies of economic development of Ukraine in the context of revealing sources of threats to financial stability of the state were analyzed. Dynamic analysis of the actual values of the financial security indicators of Ukraine as a whole and its separate components had been carried out. Threats to Ukraine's financial security were identified based on comparative and trend analysis. Reasons for the critical state of debt, banking and monetary security in the financial structure and the preconditions for the emergence of systemic threats had been investigated. Systematization of risks and threats to Ukraine's financial security by its components had been carried out. Influence of systemic threats in the financial sphere on the economic security of the state was generalized. International experience of monitoring financial stability of the state was analyzed. Additional risks to the national financial system are associated with the globalization and digitization of the state financial system that are not taken into account by valid methodological recommendations for calculating the level of economic security of Ukraine were highlighted.

Peculiarities of improving interbudgetary relations in conditions of authorities’ decentralization

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Zenoviy Siryk
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Social Services ◽  
The State ◽  
Major Objective ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Local Areas ◽  
And Control ◽  
Different Levels

Ukraine is a unitary state, yet historically various regions, oblasts, districts, and local areas have different levels of economic development. To secure sustainable economic and social development and provide social services guaranteed by the state for each citizen according to the Constitution, the mechanism of redistribution between revenues and expenditures of oblasts, regions, and territories through the budgets of a higher level is used. The paper aims to research the peculiarities of improving interbudgetary relations in conditions of authorities’ decentralization. The paper defines the nature of interbudgetary relations. The basic and reverse subsidies to Ukraine and Lvivska oblast are analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages the communities face at changing approaches to balancing local budgets are determined. Regulative documents that cover the interbudgetary relations in Ukraine are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the problem of local finances reforming, including the development of interbudgetary relations. The scheme of the economic interbudgetary relations system in Ukraine is developed. The ways to improve the system of interbudgetary relations in Ukraine are suggested. The negative and positive aspects, advantages, and disadvantages of the system of interbudgetary relations in Ukraine require the following improvements. 1. It is necessary to avoid the complete budget alignment in the process of budgets balancing by interbudgetary transfers as the major objective. 2. The interbudgetary transfers should be distributed based on a formal approach. 3. The changes have to be introduced to the calculation of medical and educational subsidies in terms of financial standard of budget provision to avoid the money deficit for coverage of necessary expenditures. 4. There is a need to improve interbudgetary relations at the levels of districts, villages, towns, and cities of district subordination. 5. Improvement of the mechanism of targeted benefits provision, their real evaluation, and control for the use of funds.

Popular Culture versus the State

1991 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Docker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
The State

The politics of the Hajj organisation in Senegal: security, legitimation and clientelism

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Cédric Jourde ◽  
Marie Brossier ◽  
Muriel Gomez-Perez
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
Travel Agencies ◽  
Security Concerns ◽  
And Control ◽  
Monitor And Control

ABSTRACTThis article analyses how the state in Senegal has managed the hajj since the liberalisation era in the early 2000s. Although the essence of the hajj is religious, it is also deeply political and requires that the state manages complex relations with pilgrims, religious leaders, private travel agencies, politicians and Saudi authorities. This article argues that three inter-related imperatives structure the conduct of the Senegalese state: a security imperative, a legitimation imperative, and a clientelistic imperative. Security concerns lead the state to monitor and control pilgrims travelling to Mecca. Legitimation is seen in the collaborative relations with Sûfi orders and in the framing of the hajj organisation as a ‘public service’. Finally, given the magnitude of financial and symbolic resources attached to the hajj, clientelistic relations are constitutive of state officials’ actions. Overall, despite the post-2000 liberalisation of the hajj, the state has maintained its role as a gatekeeper, regulator and supervisor.

Social Work With Criminalized Women: Governance or Resistance in the Carceral State?

Affilia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 088610992110147
Author(s):  
Sandra M. Leotti
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
Spaces Of Resistance ◽  
And Control ◽  
Criminalized Women

Drawing on findings from a Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis, this article examines the hegemonic ways in which social work engages with criminalized women. Utilizing the analytic of governmentality, I explore the construction of criminalized women in contemporary social work discourse and ask how those constructions support and shape practice with criminalized women. Results show that knowledge production in social work serves as a significant site through which the profession draws on, but also resists, carceral logics. I begin by discussing contemporary social work as a form of neoliberal governance. Specifically, I illuminate the ways in which social work is implicated in surveillance and control and how this involvement is obscured under the framework of helping. I then describe how bold counter discourses, such as those offered by abolitionist and anti-carceral thought foster spaces of resistance within the profession. I argue that social work should claim a stance of radical imagination in which we take seriously the calls to abolish the varying manifestations of the carceral state.

scholarly journals The Mission of the Catholic Church for the State in the Discourse of “Gosc Niedzielny” during Poland’s Interwar Period

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
Rafał Śpiewak ◽  
Wiktor Widera
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Level Of Involvement ◽  
Historical Reflection ◽  
The Catholic Church

The essence of the Catholic Church implemented in the modern world is of crucial importance for the understanding its mission towards the state, especially when developing appropriate civil attitudes. One sources of cognition is the historical reflection made on an analytical basis of Catholic media content. This article presents the discourse analysis of Gość Niedzielny (i.e., Sunday Guest), which was one of the most important Catholic publications in Poland, during the reconstruction of the Polish statehood. The pro-state mission of the Catholic Church was an expression of responsibility for common good, was nonpartisan and was connected with the promotion of values that condition the social order. It was believed that the condition of the state is determined by the moral form of its citizens and their level of involvement in social life. Christian values were though to secure and protect also the good of non-Catholic citizens. Here, the research and discourse analysis allows us to define the conclusions regarding contemporary relations between Church and the state in Poland. The key thoughts included in the publications of Sunday Guest, have contemporary application and their message is extremely up-to-date.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document