scholarly journals Labors of Love: On the Political Economies and Ethics of Bovine Politics in Himalayan India

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Govindrajan
Keyword(s):  
Rural Women ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Dairy Farmers ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Politics Of Love ◽  
Cow Protection ◽  
Ethics And Politics

This essay asks how conceptualizing love as work might provide a fresh perspective on love’s politics. In offering an ethnographic account of how love for Gau-Mata, the Cow-Mother of the idealized Hindu nation, fuels a right-wing Hindu nationalist politics of cow-protection in India’s central Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, I suggest that the specific arrangements of labor through which affective attachments are organized critically shape the ethics and politics of love. More specifically, I depict how different kinds of situated labor produced varied kinds of love in the conjoined social worlds of right-wing gau-rakshaks (cow-protectionists) and rural women dairy farmers in Uttarakhand. For these social actors, genuine love for the cow manifested in a willingness to labor for her. Yet their understandings of what this loving labor entailed differed starkly. This article examines three distinct kinds of work—protection, service, and care-labor—that these actors variously undertook out of love for the cow. It traces how these different labors produced a varied set of relationships, affiliations, and obligations that crucially shaped the ethics and politics of love. Ultimately, I show, attending to the varied labors of love in situated social worlds reveals how love can condition a variety of often conflicting political and ethical possibilities, working simultaneously as a force of transcendence, fascist violence, and repair.

“Uma revolução democrática é sempre uma revolução inacabada” — or — “A democratic revolution must always remain unfinished”

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filipa Perdigão Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach ◽  
Ideological Tensions

This article analyses the discursive construction of collective memories and the function of commemorative events for national identity. It focuses on how the 30th anniversary of the Portuguese 1974 revolution was portrayed in the government’s Programme of Action issued for the 2004 commemorations and in forty-three newspaper opinion articles also published in 2004. The 1974 revolution ended a 48-year right-wing dictatorship and has shaped subsequent historical events since the 1970s. When the Programme of Action changed the 1974 slogan ‘April is revolution’ into ‘April is evolution’, the written press responded by conducting a debate on this reframing. Using the Discourse-Historical Approach in CDA as the analytical framework, this paper highlights the discursive strategies on which the government’s manifesto was built and explores the opinion articles’ ongoing political and ideological tensions over the revolution, its commemorations, and how it paved the way into Europe, by describing the main macro-discursive strategies and raising issues regarding the (mis)representation of social actors and social action.

Inoculating the National Public

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
National Community ◽  
Multicultural Diversity ◽  
National Question ◽  
Right Wing Extremism ◽  
Neighborhood Level

This chapter focuses on campaigns for the production of positive affective orientations to cultural difference at the neighborhood level. In the wake of reunification, the national crusade against right-wing extremism has supplied one key answer to the national question. The post-reunification resignification of the national community has proceeded under the slogans of tolerance, democracy, open-mindedness, and civil society, which have been promoted as the banners of the war against the peril posed by right-wing extremists. The chapter examines how efforts to mobilize forces to the cause of tolerance and love of multicultural diversity intertwine with the capacity of affective governance to effectively recruit social actors, just as much as they betray its limits. It shows how the fabrication and rebranding of German nationalism has held a fundamental stake in the management of hate.

Home truths: fieldwork, writing and anthropology’s ‘home encounter’

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Rachel Humphris
Keyword(s):  
Social Roles ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Home Space

This chapter presents the methodology of the research including theoretical discussions of ‘anthropological truth’, the researchers’ shifting situated positions throughout the fieldwork and the writing process. This chapter draws on Munn’s conception of the social actor as a mobile spatial field. The home emerged as the most salient site of interaction through this methodology. This has two implications. First, it provides a different entry point to social worlds (resonating with feminist analytics) rather than choosing a space and exploring the social actors that create it. Second, this approach revealed the home as the site where ‘culture’ was located and contested. This opens the home space to studies on diversity and conviviality. It also demonstrates the different terms that encounters in the home took on through the social roles of host and hosting, the materiality of the space, and gendered dynamics.

scholarly journals How does the use of “culture” and “tradition” shape the women’s rights discourse in transitional Serbia?

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 679-694
Author(s):  
Sara Petrovski
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Women Rights ◽  
The Eu

Although social anthropologists have mostly abandoned the essentialist view of ?culture? and ?tradition?, these static notions are still frequently used in Serbian public discourse regarding women?s rights. I believe that analysing the production of cultural meaning and knowledge among different social actors and the state is important when exploring the implementation, transformation and protection of women?s rights at a local level. In this article, I shall investigate how ?culture? and ?tradition? are being constructed and used by certain right wing groups, political leaders, intellectuals and by the Serbian Orthodox Church. On one side, arguments of ?culture? and ?tradition? are used in order to ?preserve the national identity? and save it from ?imposed Western norms? and ?Western imperialism?, while on the other, they are used to explain the cultural obstacles regarding the effective protection of women?s rights. ?Tradition?, often constructed as a linear project of inherited ?cultural? and ?moral? values and practices, stands in opposition to the EU; therefore, it calls to be nurtured and protected or changed and abandoned. Consequently, I see women rights issues trapped into a pro-EU or against EU, pro-traditional values or pro-liberal values discourse. I conclude that women rights in Serbia are and probably will be affected more by the use and abuse of different concepts of ?culture? and ?tradition?.

Human Sociality and Psychological Foundations

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-68
Author(s):  
Nicholas Emler
Keyword(s):  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Control Function ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Reputational Costs

The argument developed in this chapter is that gossip and reputation constitute elements of social intelligence; they are intrinsically linked social psychological processes adapted to human needs to sustain and successfully navigate the complex social worlds humans inhabit. First, gossiping serves an informal social control function, sensitizing social actors to the reputational costs of bad behavior. Second, however, attention to gossip, and skilled appraisal of the information it provides, feeds into reputational judgments of personality and character, allowing these judgments to serve as more reliable predictions about others. These claims are tested against available research evidence, while gaps in the evidential framework are identified as foci for future work.

Missing the (Turning) point

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-370
Author(s):  
Anthony Fucci ◽  
Theresa Catalano
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Of Nebraska Lincoln ◽  
The University

Abstract On August 25, 2017, student members of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing conservative organization who advocates for smaller government and free market enterprise, recruited on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus. Members of the UNL community protested nearby. Part of the protest was recorded on video and released to social media leading to harsh public criticism that accused the university of restricting free speech and being an unsafe environment for conservative students. Drawing on cognitive linguistics (e.g. metonymy, framing) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), this paper explores how the TPUSA incident at UNL was recontextualized in local and national media discourse, the ways in which the social actors and events were framed, and its consequences. The authors show how these representations reinforce dominant neoliberal discourses (which correlate with right-wing discourses) that negatively impact public education, providing a necessary counter to a populist political climate in which anti-intellectualism reigns.

From neoliberal disembedding to authoritarian re-embedding: The making of illiberal hegemony in Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 721-738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Scheiring ◽  
Kristóf Szombati
Keyword(s):  
Blue Collar ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Blue Collar Workers ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Domestic Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ruling Party

This article presents and empirically substantiates a theoretical account explaining the making and stabilisation of illiberal hegemony in Hungary. It combines a Polanyian institutionalist framework with a neo-Gramscian analysis of right-wing hegemonic strategy and a relational class analysis inspired by the political economy tradition in anthropology. The article identifies the social actors behind the illiberal transformation, showing how ‘neoliberal disembedding’ fuelled the rightward shift of constituencies who had erstwhile been brought into the fold of liberal hegemony: blue-collar workers, post-peasants and sections of domestic capital. Finally, the article describes the emergence of a new regime of accumulation and Fidesz’s strategy of ‘authoritarian re-embedding’, which relies on ‘institutional authoritarianism’ and ‘authoritarian populism’. This two-pronged approach has so far allowed the ruling party to stabilise illiberal hegemony, even in the face of reforms that have generated discontents and exacerbated social inequality.

Right-wing populism and market-fundamentalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter O. Ötsch ◽  
Stephan Pühringer
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Us ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Economic Thinking

Abstract The article compares market fundamentalism and right-wing populism on the basis of its core patterns of thinking and reasoning. Based on an analysis of the work of important founders of market fundamental economic thinking and the arguments brought forward by leading right-wing populist we find many similarities of these two concepts in their "inner images". Thus, we develop a scheme of the similar dual social worlds of right-wing-populism and market fundamentalism and offer some recent examples of market fundamentalism and right-wing populism mutually reinforcing each other or serving as a gateway for each other. We then apply our scheme for the analysis of the recent political developments and its ideological roots in the US under Donald Trump. The main conclusion of this article is that market fundamentalism and right-wing populism together must be seen as two mutually reinforcing threats to democracy in the 21st century.

“Why's a Nice Dyke like you Embracing this Postmodern Crap?”

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Lugg
Keyword(s):  
Social Scientist ◽  
The United States ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Politics Of Education ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Political Right

In this article, I present a historical overview of the queer rights movement in the United States, from the late 1940s to today, weaving snapshots of my own life into the narrative, from living in the closet to being totally out, both personally and professionally. Because I was closeted at the beginning of my career my research agenda did not initially address issues of queer rights. Instead, my central focus was U.S. political right-wing movements in general and the Protestant Right in particular and how they worked to shape educational politics and policy. I also illustrate how intersectional and multidimensional analyses can uncover the ways that shifting/multiple identities shape the policies and practices of U.S. public schooling by drawing on the work of scholars and activists who acknowledge the intersections and multidimensionality of our constructed and assembled identities (Francisco Valdes, Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Kenji Yoshino and Riki Wilchins). I also draw from the earlier work of social scientist Erving Goffman, who examined how stigmatized populations navigated their social worlds. I conclude this article by exploring the notion of differentiated citizenship and what mplications it may hold for public school policy and the politics of education.

scholarly journals Legitimacy for some

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 30-50
Author(s):  
Fredrik Portin
Keyword(s):  
Positive Element ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
The People ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Inclusive Society

The purpose of this article is to examine under what conditions the disruptive character of right-wing populism can be perceived as a positive element within a functioning democracy. Using the thinking of philosophers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe I argue that the disruptive character of right-wing populism gives the marginalised concerns of ‘the people’ public legitimacy. However, right-wing populism is also criticised for excluding, in a similar fashion, certain social actors from the public sphere. Instead of enabling a more inclusive society, I therefore argue that right-wing populism enables a society that is distinguished by antagonism. To make it possible for all social actors’ concerns to gain public legitimacy without promoting antagonism, I argue that a new political reality needs to be imagined. In conclusion I therefore offer a theoretical framework for such a reality through the political philosophy of Bruno Latour.

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