The crisis of representation: workers and elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 495-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Syrovatka

The presidential and parliamentary elections were a political earthquake for the French political system. While the two big parties experienced massive losses of political support, the rise of new political formations took place. Emmanuel Macron is not only the youngest president of the V. Republic so far, he is also the first president not to be supported by either one of the two biggest parties. This article argues that the election results are an expression of a deep crisis of representation in France that is rooted in the economic transformations of the 1970s. The article analyses the political situation after the elections and tries to give an outlook on further political developments in France.


Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Piscopo

Jennifer M. Piscopo examines how the crisis of representation in Costa Rica has placed a ceiling on gender equality in representation. The restructuring of the Costa Rican party system and party fragmentation has made electing multiple candidates from any one ballot more difficult. Top spots have become even more prestigious and more likely to be allocated to men, which reduces women’s electoral chances. Corruption scandals, party breakdown, citizen frustration, and economic problems tainted the administration of the nation’s first female president, Laura Chinchilla. Female legislators have often worked to promote women’s issues and feminist policies, but Chinchilla eschewed feminism, even though several of her policies did benefit women. Overall, her failed presidency may create difficulties for other women seeking top political offices and could have negative consequences for views of women in politics. These challenges notwithstanding, Piscopo concludes that Costa Rica remains at the vanguard of women’s political representation in Latin America.


Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner ◽  
Andrew F. Herrmann

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Visconti

ABSTRACTVoters’ ideological stances have long been considered one of the most important factors for understanding electoral choices in Chile. In recent years, however, the literature has begun to call this premise into question, due to several changes in the Chilean political landscape: the current crisis of representation, the high programmatic congruence between the two main coalitions, the decline in the political relevance of the dictatorship, and the rise of nonprogrammatic electoral strategies. In addition to these transformations, Chile switched to voluntary voting in 2012. This article studies whether ideology still informs electoral choices in Chile in an era of voluntary voting. It implements a conjoint survey experiment in low-to-middle-income neighborhoods in Santiago, where voters would be expected to be less ideological. It shows that candidates’ ideological labels are crucial for understanding the electoral decisions of a large part of the sample, particularly among likely voters.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

This article constructs and deploys a set of autoethnographic narratives from the author’s experience as a Baptist minister to critically retrieve the category of ‘women’s experience’ for feminist theological construction. Autoethnography, as a response to the crisis of representation in the Humanities, uses personal narratives of the self to reveal, critique and transform wider cultural trends. It therefore provides helpful tools for analysing, critiquing and transforming theological thought and practice. Following the article’s methodological sections, the constructive sections use the crafted autoethnographies to re-frame Rowan Williams’s vision for how church and world co-constitute each other towards God’s just ends. Whereas Williams argues that this co-constitution occurs through processes of interactive transformative judgment, the feminist theological understanding argued for here founds the process instead on interactive, transformative grace.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-187
Author(s):  
Trinidad Rico

It is perhaps not surprising that discussions on the topic of destruction gain the most traction in the work of heritage in public and academic discourses alike, since this is an instrumental part of the epistemology that constructs heritage as a subject of study—what is heritage if not a subject “at risk”? Concordantly, discussions of heritage destruction are a dominant theme in contemporary conversations and concerns for the fate and management of cultural heritage in the Middle East overall (i.e. Exell and Rico 2013), a tendency that is associated with the persistence and visibility of conflict in the region during a time when heritage concerns are significantly shaped by various global “observers.” What is problematic, however, is first the way that the inherently negative mantle of destruction dominateseveryconversation about the heritage of the Middle East, and how easily academic debates have incorporated institutional and public discourses about destruction, empowering a monolithic debate that would benefit from a more critical—and ethical—analysis. Secondly, what is also alarming is the degree to which destruction is often associated with specific perpetrators in this region, notably, a caricaturized Islam whose main feature is a dislike for preservation that articulates through scandalous acts of iconoclasm across the broad Middle East region (witnessed through highly circulated vignettes of destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Mali, and other countries and regions). Yet, the representation of an Islam that is at odds with global heritage constructs has been extensively challenged academically, considering the varied and changing attitudes to non-Muslim forms of representation through time (Elias 2012), individual variations (Flood 2002), and their relationship to changes in political regimes (Elias 2007; Flood 2002), in such a way that a consistent or universal attitude to this type of representation cannot be supported. But, as I argue in this essay, the specter of the iconoclast unfortunately remains firmly established in popular discourse—and surprisingly, in some disciplinary discourses. But what happens outside of the realm of destruction in the heritage of the Middle East? Further, how can heritage studies support the integration of Islam in the heritage debates for the region in a way that circumvents the current misrepresentation?


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (17) ◽  
pp. 138-144
Author(s):  
Asma Shughail Aqib Al Hashimi ◽  
Adi Anuar Azmin

The historical moments of qualitative research reflect socially constructed quasi-historic conventions that remain crosscut and overlapping till the present. This progressive narrative is well represented and assessed in a historical overview by Denzin & Lincoln (2018) in their book “The Sage handbook of qualitative research” in the introduction “The discipline and practice of qualitative research”. Through a chapter review, this article particularly discusses the fourth moment of Quantitative research coined as “The crisis of representation”, which is believed to be the crossroads where social scientists remain entangled between the science and humanity perspective while conducting social research in order to forward social realities. This period of confusion simultaneously forwarded the multi-paradigm (positivism, postpositivism, and interpretivism), all of which have unique characteristics that are suitable for specific research. Thus, this paper sheds light on the overview of the crisis of representation and further explains the types of crises that occurred during this historical moment, including the crisis of representation, the crisis of legitimation, and a crisis of praxis. It is expected that apart from extending current literature this paper would support social scientists for selecting appropriate methods and paradigms as well as to justify their selection.


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