scholarly journals Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile*

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt

This article examines the gendered construction of power during the reign of Isabel of Castile (1474-1504). The construction of her political legitimacy was based on her manipulation of her gender and sexuality intended to contrast with the perceived shortcomings of her brother, Enrique IV. Enrique's critics had impugned his sexuality and attacked his inability to deliver Spain into a golden age. By aligning Isabel with sexually chaste models and emphasizing her ability to redeem Spain both because of and despite her gender, Isabel's partisans crafted an image that allowed her to transcend the misogynist tropes that attacked female rule.

Author(s):  
Patricia Hill Collins

For youth who are Black, Indigenous, female, or poor, coming of age within societies characterized by social inequalities presents special challenges. Yet despite the significance of being young within socially unjust settings, age as a category of analysis remains undertheorized within studies of political activism. This essay therefore draws upon intersectionality and generational analyses as two useful and underutilized approaches for analyzing the political agency of Black youth in the United States with implications for Black youth more globally. Intersectional analyses of race, class, gender, and sexuality as systems of power help explain how and why intersecting oppressions fall more heavily on young people who are multiply disadvantaged within these systems of power. Generational analysis suggests that people who share similar experiences when they are young, especially if such experiences have a direct impact on their lives, develop a generational sensibility that may shape their political consciousness and behavior. Together, intersectionality and generational analyses lay a foundation for examining youth activism as essential to understanding how young people resist intersecting oppressions of racism, heteropatriarchy, class exploitation, and colonialism.


2006 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 891-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Strauss

The early to mid-1950s are conventionally viewed as a time when China broke sharply with the past and experienced a “golden age” of successful policy implementation and widespread support from the population. This article shows that the period should be seen as neither “golden age” nor precursor for disaster. Rather it should be seen as a period when the Chinese Communist Party's key mechanisms of state reintegration and instruction of the population – the political campaign and “stirring up” via public accusation sessions – were widely disseminated throughout China, with variable results. The campaigns for land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries show that levels of coercion and violence were extremely high in the early 1950s, and the campaign to clean out revolutionaries in 1955 and after suggests some of the limits of mobilizational campaigns.


2021 ◽  

Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? What can make some democratic institutions resilient in the face of such challenges? Democratic Resilience brings together a distinguished group of specialists to examine how polarization affects the performance of institutional checks and balances as well as the political behavior of voters, civil society actors, and political elites. The volume bridges the conventional divide between institutional and behavioral approaches to the study of American politics and incorporates historical and comparative insights to explain the nature of contemporary challenges to democracy. It also breaks new ground to identify the institutional and societal sources of democratic resilience.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Souza Bittar-Godinho ◽  
Gilmar Masiero

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the political involvement of a corporate foundation (CF) though CSR under two perspectives: CF managers and the sponsor firm managers. Design/methodology/approach A single case with a Brazilian CF was conducted. Interviews with sponsor firms and foundations managers were combined with firms’ sustainability reports data and CF’s website information. Findings It was found that CF acts as an ambassador and can be a source of political legitimacy for their sponsor firm. They intermediate in governance challenges as the goals and working style of the CF, firms and municipalities can be sometimes antagonistic. Research limitations/implications The authors could not reach the municipalities officials and their perception of the Public Management Program (PMP). Practical implications The PMP creates personal and organizational relationships with public officials, a resource that can be employed to impact the political strategies of the sponsor firm. Social implications The authors also show how CF’s may help managers to deal with the typical Brazilian peculiarity of policy discontinuity in local governments. Originality/value This case study sheds light a new phenomenon: CF’s support on public management. It adds to the CSR and corporate political activities literature, the role of foundations as ambassadors of the relationship between the firm, government and society. They are not only filling gaps left by the State but are also dealing with local governments administrative deficiencies.


1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.


Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-214
Author(s):  
Tim Heysse

Historians and theoreticians of nationalism and nationalist movements are perplexed by the fact that so much of what nationalists believe is evidently not the case. One example of this concerns the ontological or metaphysical status of the nation: whether nations as a form of political community are in the very nature of things or whether they are rather a recent way of imagining the political community.I question the meaning terms such as 'natural', 'imagined' and 'objective'/'subjective' have when we are talking about the nation as the foundation of political legitimacy. Ido this by explaining what meaning those terms have in the philosophical reconstruction of interpretation and communication by the American philosopher Donald Davidson.


Author(s):  
Eric Ross

In the second of two chapters investigating the role of Homeric epic in fabricating golden ages, Ross proposes the current golden age of superhero movies as an effective lens for viewing the modern idealization of the Spartan king Leonidas as portrayed in 300 (2006). He cites several criteria: the superhero’s origin story; the threats posed by a tyrannical enemy and by civic bureaucracy; and the superhero’s tragic alienation from loved ones and society he protects. Leonidas’ superhero status resonates with Herodotus’ fifth-century BCE account of the Battle of Thermopylae, a “golden” moment in Western historiography, when Leonidas led his 300 Spartan warriors into Homeric “doomed combat” by standing their ground against the massive invasion of the Greek mainland by the army of Xerxes, Great King of Persia. Herodotus’ account has long been recognized as assimilating the Spartan warriors, especially Leonidas, to Homer’s depiction of mythical heroes, who were themselves the bases for twentieth-century superheroes. Ross demonstrates the political ramifications of the film’s use of storytelling to mobilize nostalgia for this golden age into contemporary re-enactment – despite director Zack Snyder’s (in)famous denials of political engagement.


Author(s):  
Stephen Cory

Although the fourteenth century Marīnids openly acknowledged their Berber identity, by the end of the sixteenth century, sharīfian descent had become a requirement for Moroccan rule. This chapter examines the political propaganda of the Marīnid sultan Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī (r. 731–752/1331–1351) and the Saʿdī sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahabī (r. 986–1012/1578–1603). It considers similarities and differences between their political propaganda in light of their differing historical circumstances, particularly the relative power of sharīfian movements during their respective reigns, as well as the importance of holy lineages, monarchical treatment of the shurafāʾ, and the role of ceremonies in political legitimation. It argues that the Saʿdī ability to convince Moroccans of their sharīfian lineage connected with a larger trend to equate political power with descent from the Prophet and reinforced their authority. In contrast, the Marīnids contributed to their own downfall through their inconsistent policies towards honouring the shurafāʾ.


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