Resisting Fortress Europe

Focaal ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (51) ◽  
pp. 13-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Zontini

This article considers the political engagement used by Moroccan and Filipino women in Southern Europe. It argues that immigrant women should be seen as active subjects rather than passive victims who accept subordinate roles both in their families and in the societies where they have settled. In order to appreciate the kind of political agency migrant women deploy, the article suggests two preliminary steps: extending the definition of the political so as to incorporate power and inequalities beyond political institutions, and adopting a transnational perspective so as to include the social fields encompassing more than one country in which these women operate. The article goes on to describe the different ways in which the two groups of women negotiate their citizenship rights in Southern Europe, focusing especially on how they negotiate entrance and rights to settle and how they try to improve their living and working conditions.

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (16) ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Piwnicki

It is recognized that politics is a part of social life, that is why it is also a part of culture. In this the political culture became in the second half of the twentieth century the subject of analyzes of the political scientists in the world and in Poland. In connection with this, political culture was perceived as a component of culture in the literal sense through the prism of all material and non-material creations of the social life. It has become an incentive to expand the definition of the political culture with such components as the political institutions and the system of socialization and political education. The aim of this was to strengthen the democratic political system by shifting from individual to general social elements.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1014
Author(s):  
Amín Pérez

This article proposes a new understanding of the constraints and opportunities that lead intellectuals engaged in different political and social fields to create alternative modes of resistance to domination. The study of the Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad offers insights into the social conditions of this mode of committed scholarship. On the one hand, this article applies Sayad’s theory of immigration to his transnational intellectual engagements. It establishes how immigrants’ intellectual work are conditioned by their trajectories, both before and after leaving their country, and by the stages of emigration (from playing a role in the society of origin to becoming caught up in the reality of the host society). On the other hand, the article illuminates the constraints and the spaces of possible action intellectuals face while moving across national universes and disparate political and academic fields. Sayad’s marginal position within the academy constrained him to work for the French and Algerian governments and international organizations while he was simultaneously engaged with political dissidents, unionists, writers, and social movements. In tracking Sayad’s roles as an academic, expert and public sociologist, the article uncovers the conditions that grounded improbable alliances between those fields and produced new forms of critique and political action. The article concludes by drawing out some reflections that ‘collective intellectual’ engagements elicit to the sociology of intellectuals.


Author(s):  
Nikita K. Siundiukov ◽  

The article presents a comparative analysis of the theory of Ferdinand Tönnies “Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft” and the philosophy of catholicity in the works of A.S. Khomyakov and I.V. Kireevsky. The theory of Tönnies is considered in the light of the concept of “sociological conservatism” manifested by A.F. Filippov. It is shown that the conceptual opposition “Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft” can be seen continuation of the discussion about the “nature of the social”. In this light, the main reference points of Tönnies sociology are the political theories of Aris­totle and Hobbes, with an emphasis on the definition of the “natural state” of man. Based on the analysis of Tönnies theory, it is shown that its comparison with Slavophilism is possible in three parameters: appeal to the factor of sub­stantiality, the dichotomy of “historical” and “non – historical” and the use of the concept of “organic”. It is proved that in the context of a “conservative” reading of the philosophy of sobornost, its argumentation turns out to be mainly political and sociological


Author(s):  
Özgür Erden

This article embarks on making a political analysis of Islamist politics by criticizing the hegemonic approach in the field and considering a number of the institutions or structures, composing of either state and its ideological-repressive apparatuses, political parties and actors, intellectual leadership and ideology, and political relations, events, or facts in political sphere. The aforesaid approach declares that the social and economic factors, namely class position, capital accumulation, market, education, and culture, have been far better significative for a political study in examining any political movement, party, and fact or event. However, our study will more stress on political structures, events and struggles or conflicts produced and reproduced by the political institutions, the relationships and the processes in question. Taking into account all these, it will be argued that they have been more significant as compared to class position, capital accumulation, market in economic structure, or culture and education, in a political study.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Alfeetouri Salih Mohammed Alsati ◽  
Al-Sayed Abd ulmutallab Ghanem

The current research aims at identifying and measuring the political knowledge of the students of the two universities of Al- Balqaa in Jordan and Omar Al- Mokhtar in Libya. The two communities are almost similar in terms of the social formation, Arab customs and traditions, the Bedouin values, the difference in the institutional age and the political stability.The study attempts to measure and compare the political knowledge in the communities of the two universities using the descriptive and comparative analytical method. The study uses a 400 random questionnaire of 30 paragraphs to measure eight indicators divided into internal and external political knowledge, and other aspects of knowledge: general political knowledge, knowledge of the political institutions and leaders, the political interest, the geographical and historical knowledge, and knowledge of the methods of exercising the political process. The study also attempts to identifying the most important sources and the role of the university in university students’ political knowledge.The results show that the level of the political knowledge is medium while its level in the sample of the Jordanian students is high. According to the samples, the internal political knowledge is more than the external knowledge with a lack of interest in the political matters. The samples do not consider the political matters as their priorities. The political knowledge as a whole needs to much effort to be exerted to confront the current circumstances. The variables of the place of resident, age and the educational level make big difference in the political knowledge. In contrast, the level of the parental education does not create big differences.


1963 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Thomas Hodgkin

It is not, I imagine, necessary to argue in this Journal (whose birth I welcome) that the study of African politics should never be separated from the study of African history. There was a time when the political institutions of African states (except in a few special cases, such as Ethiopia) meant ‘colonial political institutions, together with such indigenous African institutions as had been permitted to survive within the colonial framework’. For students of colonial government the study of African history had no obvious relevance. For those who wished to explain such institutions as Legislative Councils in British-controlled territories, Communes Mixtes in French-controlled territories, or the Conseil de Gouvernement in the Belgian Congo, the history of the European state which had imposed the institution was understandably more significant than the histories of the African peoples upon whom it had been imposed. As for such indigenous African political systems as had survived, in a modified form, within the colonial administrative structure, their study was—by a kind of unwritten convention—left to the social anthropologists, whose historical interests varied according to the character of the system and the approach of the anthropologist.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevil Sümer ◽  
Hande Eslen-Ziya

This article focuses on the resurgence of women’s movements in Turkey and Norway against the backdrop of their historical trajectories and wider gender policies. Throughout the 2010s, both countries witnessed a similar set of conservative and neoliberal policies that intervened in women’s bodily rights. In both countries, women’s movements responded with mass mobilizations and influenced the political agenda. The proposed restrictions on abortion were interpreted as a restriction on women’s basic bodily rights in both countries. This article argues that a feminist, multidimensional reconceptualization of the concept of citizenship and a definition of abortion as an element of women’s bodily citizenship rights are useful to promote a strong and encompassing argument for mobilization. The comparative analysis shows that the right to control one’s own body has been a unifying issue for women’s movements in Turkey and Norway which are gradually becoming more inclusive.


2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 939-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOÃO NUNES

AbstractIt has become common to speak of health security, but the meaning of the latter is often taken for granted. Existing engagements with this notion have been constrained by an excessive focus on national security and on the securitising efforts of elites. This has led to an increasingly sceptical outlook on the potentialities of security for making sense of, and helping to tackle, health problems. Inspired by the idea of security as emancipation, this article reconsiders the notion of health security. It takes as its starting point the concrete insecurities experienced by individuals, and engages with them by way of an analytical framework centred on the notion of domination. Domination deepens analysis by connecting individual experiences of insecurity, the social interactions through which these are given meaning, and the structures that make them possible. Domination also broadens the remit of analysis, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of insecurity. The analytical benefits of this framework are demonstrated by two examples: HIV/AIDS; and water and sanitation. The lens of domination is also shown to bring benefits for the political engagement with global health problems.


1977 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Kaufert

A number of recent studies have challenged the concept of an ethnic grou as an absolute category and emphasised that ethnic identity is influenced by the context of the social situation in which the behaviour occurs.2 Analyst of migrant communities in both West Africa and the Copperbelt have documented the existence of situational ethnicity as a phenomenon in which individual or group identity is defined in terms of categories which vary in their level of inclusiveness. Situational factors have increasingly come to be viewed as influencing the individual's definition of his rôle as a member of more inclusive groups which allows him to relate to a more culturally heterogeneous community in terms of common elements of identity.3 Studies concentrating upon the political significance of ethnic identity in public interactions have also stressed that situational factors may play a more important role than cultural similarity in developing more inclusive identity groupings.4 Finally, analysts dealing with the problems of multiple ethnic loyalties have stressed that individuals and groups have an array of alternate identities from which to choose. They will adopt — or be perceived by others as maintaining — different ethnic identities in different situations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Cahyo Pamungkas

This article is addressed to describe the social relations within the Papuan ethnic groups and between Papua native and migrants concerning some customary rights in Kaimana district. This research describes the struggle of inland and beach tribes in fighting for customary rights of land in Kaimana. Moreover, it captures the respond of migrants in dealing with the customary right. This study shows the recognition of the the eldest ethnic in Kaimana is a strategy and discourse constructed by Papua ethnic groups that have felt marginalized while migrants have taken their resources. This right could be understood as the need for recognition of Papua ethnic groups. The most important issue is not who the native of Kaimana is, but what the proper ways to give recognition to Papua ethnic groups which had been left behind in development are. The relation between the Papua natives and migrants in Kaimana is not complicated as the migrants have no privileges in the political contestation. However, these relationship are affected by the differences in religious affiliations. The Muslim Papua ethnic groups generally have a closer relationship with the Muslim migrants. The analytical framework of this study using the theoretical framework of identity and ethnicity to look at the issue. Does the definition of identity and ethnicity according to sociological theories are still relevant to understanding the issue of claims of ethnic identity in the city of Kaimana.


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