scholarly journals The Origins of Turkey’s “Heterodox” Transition to Neoliberalism: The Özal Decade and Beyond

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Şahan Savaş Karataşlı
Keyword(s):  
Political Movements ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Neoliberal Reforms ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Paradoxical Consequence ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
National Bourgeoisie

This article examines the origins of Turkey’s neoliberal transformation in world-historical perspective by highlighting interactions between the crisis of U.S. hegemony, social and political movements in Turkey, and Turgut Özal's political career as the architect of the country’s neoliberal reforms. I argue that Turkey’s neoliberal transition during the “Özal Decade (1980-1989/1993)” was not primarily related to resolving the profitability crisis of the existing national bourgeoisie (Istanbul-based industrial bourgeoisie) or reconstituting class power in favor of this segment of capital. The Turkish neoliberal project was more concerned with establishing a stable political-economic environment that would help Turkey's political society reassert its hegemony over civil society and allow for the penetration of the changing interests of the world-hegemonic power in the region. Because of these social and geopolitical concerns, Turkey's neoliberal reforms (1) contributed to the development of an alternative/rival segment of national bourgeoisie which had the potential to co-opt radicalized Islamic movements, (2) aimed at creating a large middle class society (instead of shrinking it), (3) utilized populist attempts at redistribution to lower segments of society to co-opt the grievances and anger of the masses. As a paradoxical consequence of these dynamics, income inequality decreased during Turkey’s transition to neoliberalism. Neoliberal reforms in the post-Özal period – with similar “heterodox” features – resurrected and further deepened during “the Erdoğan decade” (2002-present) although Erdoğan did not share a single aspect of Özal’s professional career as a neoliberal technocrat.

Workers and Occupational Safety and Health Professionals: Developing the Relationship

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Michael B. Lax
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Workplace Health ◽  
Technical Issue ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship

The occupational safety and health movement has been transformed from a struggle emphasizing workplace democracy to a de-politicized technical debate. Professionals involved in occupational safety and health (OSH) are continuously urged to keep “politics” out of their work. However, “politics,” defined as the participation in knowledge production and decision-making that profoundly affects working life, is inherent to the work of OSH professionals. These professionals function within specified roles largely created and shaped to meet the needs of the corporate class. In this context, there is a need for professionals who are explicitly allied to workers struggling for health and safety. However, there are powerful constraints to the development of this alliance, including professionals’ need for jobs, job security, and credibility. Additionally, many professionals seeking an alliance with workers remain under the sway of hegemonic myths that limit their ability to function as worker allies. These myths include non-recognition of class power and its effects on workplace health, a view of OSH as purely a technical issue, and a failure to recognize how OSH knowledge is shaped by its political/economic context. Ideas for developing an alternative praxis are offered.

From Political Acquiescence to Civil Disobedience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ngok Ma
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
The Masses

The outbreak of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 followed decades of futility in the democracy movement. Years of conventional protests and bargaining had failed to bring about full democracy for Hong Kong. The rise of a new political identity and trends of radicalization in social and political movements fuelled the massive civil disobedience campaign. With Beijing handing down an election formula that allowed popular elections only after a Beijing-controlled committee screened the candidates, the opposition was prepared to launch an occupation campaign. Police violence then triggered the spontaneous participation of the masses, culminating in the 79-day occupation that signified a new stage of contentious movements for Hong Kong.

The Urbanization of Capital and the Production of Capitalist Natures

2018 ◽  
pp. 538-556
Author(s):  
Erik Swyngedouw
Keyword(s):  
Class Struggle ◽  
Creative Destruction ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Organization And Management ◽  
Strategic Position ◽  
Political Economic

In the corpus of Marxist thought as well as in mainstream socialist strategies and politics, the theoretical and politically strategic position and role of space, nature, and the urbanization process in the expanded production and reproduction of capitalism, and in the transformation to socialism, remains—with a few notable exceptions—largely marginal and residual. Nonetheless, cities are hotbeds of anti-capitalist struggles and socio-ecological conflict, offer experimental spaces for emancipatory socio-ecological transformation and action, and remain pivotal for the organization and management of the creative destruction that animates a continuously revolutionizing capital circulation process. This chapter explores how emancipatory-egalitarian political movements, in conjunction with urban political-economic and political-ecological transformation, demonstrate the vital role of space, urbanization, and socio-ecological processes both in sustaining the expanded reproduction of capitalism and in choreographing the dynamics and configuration of class struggle.

scholarly journals Modernizing Islam

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-108
Author(s):  
Shaza Khan
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Gulf States ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Political Economic

As the political climate between many western and Muslim nations continuesto intensify, the rhetoric of a “clash of civilizations” has reemerged inour news media, governments, and academic institutions. Muslims andnon-Muslims, with varying political agendas, insist that Islam is inherentlyincompatible with modernity, democracy, and the West. Yet the contributorsto Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle Eastand Europe demonstrate otherwise as they examine the (re)Islamization ofEurope and the Middle East and reveal the ways in which “Islamic politicalactivism” (p. 3), or Islamism, promotes modernization.In the first of three sections, “Issues and Trends in Global Re-Islamization,” François Burgat describes how the progressive components of Islamization get hidden under a myriad of misconceptions. The termIslamist, he asserts, often serves to essentialize Muslim political activists bydepicting them as a homogenous group comprised of Islamic militants. Theuse of this term also “tends to strengthen the idea that Islamists are the onlyones using … religion for political purposes” (p. 28), though clearly otherindividuals, institutions, and religious organizations use religion for politicalends as well. Due to the essentialized and reductionist uses of the term, thereal characteristics of Islamism as a “relative, plural, and reactive” phenomenonare rarely recognized (p. 18). These obscuring lenses blur the image(s)of Islam even more in a country like France, where issues related to religionare often relegated to the “irrational.” In such contexts, Islamist movementsare constantly invalidated, though the activists’ reasons for opposition maywell be rooted in legitimate political, economic, and social factors.The obscurants that Burgat details in chapter 1 often cause individualsto view Islamists as anti-modernist and retrogressively reactionary. Yet inchapter 2, “The Modernizing Force of Islam,” Bjorn Olav Utvik argues “thatif Islamism is a reaction it is a progressive one, a step forward into somethingnew, not trying to reverse social developments, but rather to adapt religionso that it enables people to cope with the new realities” (p. 60). Utviklinks modernization to both urbanization and industrialization and characterizesit as a phenomenon that results in increased individualization, socialmobilization, and recognition of state centrality in achieving political ends(p. 43). He then proceeds to draw parallels between the goals of Islamistmovements and characteristics of modernization.In the next chapter, “Islam and Civil Society,” John Esposito furtherdemonstrates Islam’s compatibility with modernization and, more specifically,with democracy. He surveys Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Iran,and the Gulf states in an effort to illustrate the importance, functionality,and popularity of their Islamic organizations. Importantly, he asserts thatwhile most of these Islamist movements begin by working within the foldof the governments’ established political processes, “the thwarting of a participatorypolitical process by governments that cancel elections or represspopulist Islamic movements fosters radicalization and extremism” (p. 92).Esposito suggests that increasing open competition for political power inthese countries and sustaining a reexamination of traditional Islamic rulingsregarding pluralism, tolerance, and women’s role in society will result ingreater compatibility between Islam and democracy ...

scholarly journals The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Ideology vs. Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
David Schwartz ◽  
Daniel Galily
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Western Model ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Masses

This study aims to present the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, its ideology and pragmatism. With progress and modernization, the Islamic movements in the Middle East realized that they could not deny progress, so they decided to join the mainstream and take advantage of technological progress in their favor. The movement maintains at least one website in which it publishes its way, and guides the audience. Although these movements seem to maintain a rigid ideology, they adapt themselves to reality with the help of many tools, because they have realized that reality is stronger than they are. The main points in the article are: The status of religion in the country; What is the Muslim Brotherhood? According to which ideology is the movement taking place? - Movement background and ideology; Theoretical background – The theory of Pragmatism; How is pragmatism manifested in the activity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? In conclusions: The rise of the Islamist movements as a leading social and political force in the Middle East is the result of the bankruptcy of nationalism, secularism and the left in the Arab world, which created an ideological vacuum, which is filled to a large extent by the fundamentalists, ensuring that Islam is the solution. It is not only about the extent of the return to religion, but about the transformation of religion into a major political factor both by the regimes and by the opposition. These are political movements that deal first and foremost with the social and political mobilization of the masses, and they exert pressure to apply the Islamic law as the law of the state instead of the legal systems taken from the Western model.

Problems of Integration of Karachay into Russia: the August Uprising of 1855

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10 (108)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Rustam Begeulov
Keyword(s):  
Political Movements ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Local Character ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Political Cooperation ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article discusses issues related to the problem of the occurrence of the peoples of the Northwest Caucasus in the Russian state in the 19th century. In the centre of this study — the Karachay Principality and its military-political cooperation with Russia, the theocratic state formations of the Caucasus Islamists and the Ottoman Empire primarily in the 1850s. The focus of this article is paid to the causes and consequences of anti-Russian uprisings in Karachay in August 1855. Examines religious (thestrengthening of Islam in the Karachay society and its potential for integration in relations between highlanders) and ethnic (attempts at building different ethnic groups of the joint political and military strategy) aspects of the incident; analyzes the destabilizing role of foreign factors in the events. The paper examines the policy of Shamil's Naib to the Kuban Muhammad-Amin against the Karachay, highlights the reasons for his persistent attempts to involve people in Karachay on its side and include it in the composition of its public education. The authors dwell in detail on the description of attempts of military-political rapprochement Muhammad-Amin with the Karachai people, their political, economic, ideological contacts in the period preceding military conflicts, anti-Russian rhetoric in 1855. The article notes that the revolt in Karachay in 1855 were not of a local character, and was closely connected with religious-political movements in North Caucasus in the period under review and attempt the practice established in the end of eighteenth century ideas on the creation of a single theocratic state in the region.

From class society to the individualized society? A critical reassessment of individualization and class

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Rasborg
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
Theoretical Integration ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Reflexive Modernity

The concept of “individualization” plays a central role in both classic and modern sociology. In modern sociology writers such as Beck, Giddens, and Bauman made the concept of individualization a key one in their theories of “late”, “reflexive”, and “liquid modernity”. However, the emphasis which the sociology of individualization puts on “liberation”, choice and social change is challenged by the sociology of stratification and power (Bourdieu, Dean, and others) with its greater emphasis on class, power and social reproduction. This paper seeks to “overcome” this schism between social change and social reproduction in the form of an attempt to think the differentiated (stratified) forms of individualization in reflexive modernity. The assumption is that there is a differentiation in reflexive modern people’s ability to deal with the requirements of individualization, depending on their possession of economic, social and cultural capital. This is argued by means of a theoretical “reconstruction” of the insights and deficiencies of the sociology of individualization, and demonstrated—with a focus on young people—by a number of empirical examples. In conclusion, the paper discusses the possibility of a theoretical integration of the fundamental insights of both the sociology of individualization and the sociology of stratification.

scholarly journals The Political Leadership of Mao Zedong

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Donia Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Masses

This paper presents an analysis of the former Chinese Communist Party leader Chairman Mao Zedong's political career (reigned 1949-1976), with regards to his success and failures. Mao was one of the most prominent Communist theoreticians who governed a quarter of humankind for a quarter of a century. His political philosophy, particularly his Method of Leadership, focusing on the "masses" is discussed here. The analytical arguments are centered on three phases of his leadership: the rise, the apex, and the fall. In the first phase, the paper attributes his victory before 1949 to his profound understanding of Chinese peasants. In the second phase, it elaborates on his successful method of leadership in the early 1950s. And in the third and last phase, it criticizes his disastrous political movements, particularly the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The study hopes to offer an objective and a balanced view of Chairman Mao, who had a complex personality and was a highly controversial figure in human history. The article also wishes to help readers gain a better understanding of China's top leader in recent history, and how China came to be what it is today.

scholarly journals Religious ritual contested: anti-religious activities and women’s ritual practice in rural Soviet Karelia

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Marja-Liisa Keinänen
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The People ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Fundamental Reason ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
The Masses

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to establish a new atheistic order which would eradicate from the public consciousness all vestiges of "religious prejudices", which were regarded as a residue from the imperial era and an instrument used to exploit the masses. Even though it was generally held that religion would automatically disappear from socialist society when its material precondition, the class society, was abolished, the regime made concentrated efforts to speed up the process by means of virulent anti-religious propaganda. The ultimate goal was to wipe out the persistent remains of the bourgeois system of values. No force was to be used since it was feared this would merely offend the religious sentiments of the people and strengthen their adherence to religion. Theoretically, the ultimate goal was to be achieved through education and information, but in practice, anti-religious activities were at times quite brutal. These attacks were successful in curtailing the activities of religious institutions in Karelia, but did not bring to an end the religious practices of lay people, which were continued, in one form or another, throughout the entire Soviet period. One fundamental reason for the survival of religious rituals, both Christian and indigenous, was the fact that they were so deeply embedded in people's consciousness and intimately integrated with their everyday lives. Every important phase and turn in human life was sanctified by rituals. The goal of the present paper is to examine what forms anti-religious attacks took in Soviet Karelia and how people reacted to them. The focus is on the attacks against the very fundaments of the ritual complex of the church and, by extension, on the effects of these attacks on the indigenous ritual complex, which co-existed in parallel with that of the "official" religious institutions.

scholarly journals Historical Background of Formation and Development of Medieval Cities in Zhetysu (Semirechye) and South Kazakhstan

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 932-939
Author(s):  
N. M. Zinyakov
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Grain Processing ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Type ◽  
Political Economic

The present research was based on archaeological and written sources and featured the prerequisites of medieval urbanization of Zhetysu, or Semirechye, and South Kazakhstan. The local urbanization was influenced by political, economic, and social processes. In the political sphere, the factors included: onset and development of state units; political and ideological inclusion of society; better external security; regulation of legal and tax activities, which created a single economic mechanism for reproductive economy, etc. In the economic sphere, the important factors of urban development corresponded with the so-called second stage of the agrarian revolution, i.e. transition from primitive to intensive manual agriculture; use of arable tools with iron ploughshares and sled animals; popularization of irrigation; cultivation of grain and industrial crops; better storage and grain processing, etc. As for the social sphere, the period was marked by degradation of tribal relations. As a result, early class society was beginning to form. This new type of social relations was based not on family ties but on economic contacts, which contributed to the formation of the social structure of medieval cities, e.g. strata of artisans, merchants, administrative elite, priests, etc. The analysis of sources showed that the main historical prerequisites for the urban development of Semirechye and South Kazakhstan were formed in the early Middle Ages. However, their formation was rather irregular and depended on the exact area.

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