Homeland Political Crisis, the Virtual Diasporic Public Sphere, and Diasporic Politics

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel S. Laguerre
Author(s):  
Başak Can

The government used medico-legal documentation of prisoners’ health condition to solve the biopolitical crisis in penal institutions immediately after the end of death fast (2000-2007) and released hundreds of hunger strikers, who suffered from incurable conditions. That the state turned a political crisis into a medical one using the illness clause had unprecedented consequences for how claims are made in the political sphere. Human rights activists, Kurdish and leftist politicians are now using the plight of ill prisoners to make political arguments in the public sphere. The health conditions of political prisoners, specifically the use of the illness clause has thus emerged as one of the most contentious fields in the encounters between the state and its opponents. This chapter examines how temporality works as an instrument of necropolitics through the slow production and circulation of the medico-legal bureaucratic documents that are produced through encounters with multiple state officials. I argue, first, that medico-legal processes surrounding the detainees are mediated through the discretionary sovereign acts of multiple state officials, including but not limited to physicians, and second, that legal medicine as a technology of state violence is central to understanding the intertwined histories of sovereignty and biopolitics in Turkey.


2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
LLOYD BOWEN

ABSTRACTCharles I and his clerical supporters are often said to have been wary of print and public discussion, only entering the public sphere reluctantly and to comparatively little effect during the political crisis of 1642. This article challenges such views by focusing on the neglected role of official forms of print such as proclamations, declarations, and state prayers and their promulgation in the nation's churches. It traces the ways in which the king utilized the network of parish clergy to broadcast his message and mobilize support during the Scottish crisis of 1639–40 and again in the ‘paper war’ of 1642. The article argues that traditional forms of printed address retained their potency and influence despite the proliferation of polemical pamphlets and newsbooks. The significance of these mobilizations is demonstrated by the profound disquiet they caused among the king's Covenanter and parliamentarian opponents as well as the ‘good effects’ they had in generating support for the royalist cause.


Author(s):  
Christopher Baker

This chapter examines, via two-faith based case studies of welfare provision and social justice (a food project and a local currency initiative), emerging performative practices of responsible citizenship and explores their implications for public policy and political philosophy. Key concepts framing this debate include ideas of postsecularity, spiritual capital, progressive localism, moral pluralism and spaces of convergence. The chapter argues that we are in the process of shifting from a Rawlsian framed understanding of responsible citizenship to a post-Rawlsian one. The former framework proposed an expectation of rational citizenship in the form of individualised cognitive assent to universalist conceptual frameworks based on notions of justice, equality and liberty. The new post-Rawlsian framework is based on more affective and performative ideas or subjectivities of citizenship, based on the desire for a re-connectivity after 40 years of neo-liberalised imaginaries and assumptions. This desire to reconnect at both a community and an ethical level is driven both by deepening inequality and lack of hope in several localities, but also a complex framing of macro drivers including the re-emergence of religious and non-religious beliefs in public sphere, and the realisation of the depth of the moral as well as political crisis presented in current modernity. The author refers to these faith-curated case studies as new spaces of convergence that express a radical hospitality and commitment to practically living out an ethic of care and dignity. The clear moral religious frameworks characterising these spaces attracts other social actors from a variety of political, epistemological and ontological positions which creates added value in terms of problem solving capability, insight and shared resources. 


2004 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 115-154
Author(s):  
Bedri Gencer

The political crisis of modernity has given rise to a number of studies in the area of political history that are disproportionately concerned with civil society. This consequently has spawned the development of broad theoretical frameworks concerning civil society and the public sphere. One of the lesser-treated subjects within this context has been public opinion. Developed primarily by post-Enlightenment liberal political theory, the notions of civil society and the public sphere had been presented as major alternatives to the domain of the power politics of the Machiavellian tradition. In order to place public opinion on a sound theoretical basis, there arose the need to promote historical empirical studies of it across national contexts over time. . One of the most significant tasks confronting comparative historical sociologists today is uncovering the origin of public opinion, which this paper undertakes to do within an Ottoman context.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-82
Author(s):  
Dr. Samson Ranti Akinola

Abstract The increasing deprivation, neglect and orchestrated politics of exclusion by the Nigerian-state against the people of the Niger Delta can be traced to the structurally-defective and centralized governance arrangements in the Niger Delta. The consequent stiff resistance, violent reactions, militancy and hostage taking triggered by this politics of exclusion in the region have confirmed that people matter in politics. This paper argues that in some ways, the weakness of centralized and structurally-defective governance in the Niger Delta provides an opportunity for community self-governing institutions to play the role that governments and their agencies have abandoned. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, this paper engages in problem solving and solution seeking strategies that could help restructure the public sphere in the Niger Delta. This paper demonstrates principles and practices needed to make polycentric planning, self-governance and adaptive development strategies resolve socio-economic and political crisis. It is in light of this exigency that this paper develops an African Public Sphere Restructuring Model (APSRM) that derives inspirations and workability mechanisms from twelve (12) African development models that cut across several sectors of the economy in the Niger Delta.


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