Sufi Springs: Air on an Oud String

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Rooney
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Initial Part ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Will ◽  
Arts Activism

The initial part of Caroline Rooney's essay offers an incisive account of the author's experience of Cairo in the years leading up to the 2011 uprisings that led to the end of Hosni Mubarak's rule. Rooney's narrative evinces an active Downtown cosmopolitan spirit characterised by a burgeoning sense of ‘audacity’ in forms of arts activism, and its attendant collective spirit of perseverance that increasingly rendered ineffective the repressive manoeuvres of Egypt's disciplinary State. Criticising the impulse to construe the Egyptian revolution in terms of a mimetic desire for a secular democracy on Western lines, Rooney insists that the Arab uprisings consisted, in many respects, of a revolution against Western-style free market neoliberalism. Countering the perpetual cynicism attendant to the latter, Rooney argues, requires a form of politicisation that maintains ‘the ongoing presence of the real as a matter of collective spirit’ – one that can outlast the colonial interlude by resisting the absolutist self-assertion of market fundamentalism and its collusions with ‘diplo-economic cosmopolitanism’ as a mode of class-discriminatory privilege, as well as the compromising nature of right-wing Islam. Rooney moves on to locate a counter-movement based on an alternative form of consciousness that manifests itself ‘as solidarity, as resoluteness, as genuine comradeship, as collective consciousness, as revolutionary faith and [as] festiveness.’ In the last part of her essay, Rooney raises the intriguing case of Sufism, and specifically its mulid rituals and its important role in the Egyptian revolutionary effort, as a relational cultural mode that can survive the will-to-dominance as a persistent and liberatory collective gesture.

Volkswille: Reale Substanz oder notwendige Fiktion?

Der Staat ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-396
Author(s):  
Shu-Perng Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Real ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The Individual

Angesichts des markanten Aufstiegs des Rechtspopulismus in den vergangenen Jahren drängt sich die Frage immer wieder auf, ob oder inwiefern das Parlament den eigentlichen Volkswillen (noch) vertreten kann, und wie im Zeitalter der Globalisierung und Digitalisierung der eigentliche Volkswille überhaupt festzustellen und effektiv durchzusetzen ist. In dieser Hinsicht steht das Vertrauen in die Fähigkeit des Parlaments, den wahren Volkswillen herauszubilden und zu artikulieren, erneut vor großen Herausforderungen. Durch eine vergleichende Analyse zwischen den Demokratietheorien Böckenfördes und Kelsens zeigt der vorliegende Beitrag, weshalb und inwiefern das weitverbreitete Verständnis des Volkswillens und dessen Rolle in der parlamentarischen Demokratie gerade vor dem heutigen Hintergrund eine kritische Besinnung verdient. Es wird argumentiert, dass gerade in demokratischer Hinsicht nicht die Suche nach dem „wahren Volkswillen“, sondern nach wie vor die Gewährleistung der Menschen- bzw. Grundrechte der Einzelnen und insbesondere der Minderheiten von zentraler Bedeutung sein soll. In view of the spread of right-wing populism in recent years, the question as to how the will of the people is to be ascertained and expressed has attracted much attention in constitutional scholarship. In particular, the issue of whether or to what extent the parliament is (still) capable of representing and demonstrating the will of the people has been repeatedly discussed and debated. Through a comparative analysis of Böckenförde’s und Kelsen’s democratic theories, this article critically examines the problems of the widespread understanding of the will of the people as a real-empirical existence and its significance for the realization of democracy. Accordingly, it points out why and in what sense the reference to the so-called real will of the people would undermine rather than promote democracy. This article concludes by arguing that, precisely for the sake of democracy, what is crucial is not to determine what the “real will of the people” is, but rather to guarantee the freedom of the individual and especially of the minorities.

scholarly journals Where There’s At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing the Increasing Incoherence of Employment at Will

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott A. Moss
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Common Law ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Employment At Will ◽  
Legal Remedy ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Common ◽  
At Will

Employment at will, the doctrine holding that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as “essential to free enterprise” and “central to the free market,” but in recent years they increasingly have riddled the rule with exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of two states illustrates: One state accepts exception X to protect employees while rejecting exception Y to maintain employment at will; yet on the same rationales, the other accepts exception Y while rejecting X.

scholarly journals Il disallineamento tra orientamenti elettorali e posizioni sui temi: una questione giovanile o di famiglia politica?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dario Tuorto
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Ideological Space ◽  
Economic State ◽  
The Relationship

The transformation of politics in contemporary democracies has led to the emergence of a new ideological conflict, alongside the traditional left-right scheme, described as liberal–authoritarian or cosmopolitan–nationalist cleavage (Norris and Inglehart 2018; Kriesi 2008; 2012; Hooge and Marks 2009; 2018). This brought to a redefinition of the linkages between issue and voting preferences, as many voters decide to support a party independently of their positions or change positions on the issues while voting for the same party. Within such framework, the contribute of the new generations to the growth of the electoral dealignment and volatility has been largely analysed (Franklin 2004; Miller and Shanks 1996; Plutzer 2006). Issue incongruency is part of the process. Young people are often considered to be tolerant and inclusive because they grew up under prosperous and secure conditions and developed post-materialist values of freedom, multiculturalism, progressivism (Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Janmaat and Keating 2019). However, the perspective of left-cosmopolitans engaged in electoral politics contrasts with the image of economically-insecure left-behind group of young people who don’t share the same progressive values (Sloam and Henn 2017; Sanders and Twyman 2016) and support right-wing political parties. What is still unknown is the extent to which extreme ideological traits and attitudes (e.g. negative discourses on immigration) combine with positions of openness on individual freedom. Likewise, the same contradiction can be found among left-wing voters who assume liberal position on economy or those economically left and culturally conservative. The article aims at analysing the relationship between issue positions and vote (propensity to vote). We test the hypotheses of a coherent vs incoherent ideological space by looking at the structure of voters’ preferences on economic (State vs. free market) and cultural issues (individual rights, attitudes towards minorities, European integration) and the differences between young people and older component of the electorate. The analysis is focused on the Italian case. Data are taken from the 2020 Itanes survey.

Is freedom as non-domination a right-wing idea?

2020 ◽  
pp. 147488512092953
Author(s):  
Stanislas Victor Richard
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The State ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Majoritarian Democracy ◽  
Capitalist Firm

Sean Irving’s book Hayek’s Market Republicanism: The Limits of Liberty shows that the commonly accepted reading of Hayek as a liberal thinker is mistaken, and that his political writings are best understood as belonging to the broader tradition of republicanism. The distinction is important for understanding many aspects of Hayek’s thought, and especially his rejection of social justice and majoritarian democracy. In that sense, one of the book’s more general merits is its implicit contribution to ongoing debates between republican ‘freedom as non-domination’ and liberal ‘freedom as non-interference’. Irving focuses on what he sees as a contradiction between Hayek’s chief concerns about the state as the main source of domination and his disregard for private forms of power, and especially within the capitalist firm. I argue, however, that the example of Hayek should lead us to consider a more prosaic conclusion: freedom as non-domination is a concept less useful for criticising the free market than Irving and left-leaning Republicans seem to assume.

Brazilian businessmen movements: Right-wing populism and the (dis)connection between policy and politics

Organization ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amon Barros ◽  
Sergio Wanderley
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Right Wing Populism

We advocate for the relevance of taking Brazilian past experience and theorization of populism into account to understand present-day challenges. We depart from Weffort’s conceptualization of populism to discuss the role of businesspeople movements in supporting and taking control of the political agenda through think tanks. According to Weffort, populism is built over precarious alliances that tend to favor policy or politics in different moments. During times of divergence among political elites, a populist leader emerges as a mediator in orchestrating an unstable hegemony among asymmetric classes. At the same time, the classes included in the populist alliance give legitimacy to the populist leader; they hinder his capacity of imposing decisions. However, treason of the weakest within the alliance is certain. We suggest that the political role played by the think tank IPES, in 1960s Brazil, in reframing middle-class demands is akin to contemporary populist events in Brazil—represented by the election of Jair Bolsonaro—and in the Anglo-Saxon world. Trumpism and Brexit are examples of a still-powerful free-market ideology project wrapped up under a populist discourse (re)framed with the support of businessmen and think tanks. A corporate takeover of government and the imposition of a free-market agenda are certain, as it is the treason of the weakest in the populist coalition. CMS academics should engage with the demands that give birth to populist movements as a way to dispute the neoliberal hegemony and anti-democratic populist solutions.

Could a Feminist and a Game Theorist Co-Parent?

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Wendling ◽  
Paul Viminitz
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
And Behavior

Game theorists assume that rational defensibility is a necessary condition for moral, social, or political justification. By itself, this is a fairly uncontroversial claim; most moral or political philosophers would agree. And yet game theorists tend to be advocates of the free market. External critics of game theory usually claim this is because game theorists assume that individuals are atomistic and self-interested. Game theorists themselves deny this, however, for what strike us as good reasons. In principle, game theory has no necessary ties to right-wing distribution schemes. Why, then, is game theory almost exclusively the province of conservative philosophers, political scientists, and economists? The problem, we believe, lies in the theory of rational choice standardly employed by game theory. Even if we accept, for the purposes of argument, game theory's account of the justification of moral dispositions — that a disposition is morally justified if and only if, in its absence, it would be game theoretically rational to acquire it — we need not be led to right-wing solutions. If we expand the kinds of choices facing individuals to include choices about what we will call ‘institutional roles,’ then we can explain the game theoretic rationality of the kinds of emotions and behavior exemplified by duty, loyalty, and love.

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.

Straight macho nationalism

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Wing Movement ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Mainstream Culture

While both Polish mainstream and right-wing movement inherit aggressive homophobic discourses, gay mayors and even anti-homophobic Neo-Nazis seem to be evidence for a German paradise of (homo-)sexuality. The essay traces homophobic discourses in the imagery of the right-wing and the mainstream in post-'communist' Poland and compares them to the seemingly tolerant mainstream culture in Germany. The difference seems to be clear: in Poland homosexuality has become the ticket which stands for all the fears which are present in a rapidly changing (catholic) society; homosexuality in Germany is a commodity sold like everything else in capitalism - and has thus created space for sexual self-expression beyond heterosexism. Obviously, it's not that easy: homosexuality sells, but homophobia does, too. Besides other problems, the comparison highlights the danger of mistaking current capitalist cultural production for a emancipatory situation where multiple identities really could evolve without limits - may the latter be created by physical or epistemological violence or the coercions of the free market.

The New Right in Central Europe I: Czechoslovakia

1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Scruton
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
New Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Market Theory ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Social Conservatism ◽  
The Impact

‘The New Right’, as it has come to be known, derives from at least two major intellectual sources, free market theory and social conservatism. The question how far these are compatible is frequently raised. The aim of this two-part article is to explore the impact of ‘New Right’ thinking in East Central Europe (specifically in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) in order to show that, in the conditions of ‘real socialism’, free market and social conservative ideas seem to arise naturally from the same root conceptions. The first part deals with Czechoslovakia-specifically with the thought of Patocka, Have1 and Bratinka, and with the conservative wing of the Charter movement. It argues that, while many writers would specifically reject labels like ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’, the actual content of their thought is very close to that of the New Right in the western hemisphere. In particular, the call for a ‘depoliticization’ of society, for responsible accounting, and for a lived historical identity which will be both national and European, are indistinguishable from long-standing themes of social conservatism.

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