“Peasants” Against Industrialization: Images of the Peasantry and Urban Activists’ Representations of the Rural

People's Car ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 131-152
Author(s):  
Sarasij Majumder

This chapter shows how urban activists seek to construct an authentic peasant voice in order to make connections with a transnational civil society, which has its own agendas, views, and implicit or explicit interests. The construction of an “authentic voice” requires erasing differences within villages in the name of social justice. The strategies employed to do so lead to the silencing and exclusion of many poor and non-poor villagers, and even the protesters themselves, who stand to gain in various ways from the building of the factory.

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-86
Author(s):  
Augustin Loada

Like elsewhere in Africa, civil society in its current forms re-emerged in the Sahelian countries with political liberalization and the transition from authoritarian rule to democratic systems. This chapter surveys the emergence and the forms of civil society, and analyzes its roles and practices in relation to the efforts to create and maintain political order. Sahelian civil societies in each country have struggled to develop, to maintain their autonomy, and to participate in the construction of new political orders, in the face of the authoritarian impulses of powerholders to domesticate and control them. Civil society is called on to play an important role in promoting, defending, and protecting the principles and values of democracy and social justice in the face of states’ efforts to establish stable political order. The chapter explores the many factors shaping its ability to do so in the Sahel.


Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Nolan J. Argyle ◽  
Gerald A. Merwin

Privatization, contracting out, and a host of other current trends blur the line between public and private—they create what at best is a fuzzy line. This study examines yet one additional area where the lines between public and private have gotten even fuzzier—the best selling novel. It uses the writings of Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler,two authors whose names on a novel guarantee best-seller status. It will do so in the context of what a civic community and civil society are, and how they relate to the public-private question, a question that has renewed life in public administration.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dorota Szelewa

This article analyses two cases of populist mobilisation – namely, one against a primary school entry-age reform and another against WHO sexuality education and the concept of gender – that took place in Poland between 2008 and 2019. Both campaigns had a populist character and were oriented towards restoring social justice taken away from ‘the people’ by a morally corrupted ‘elite’. There are differences between the cases that can be analytically delineated by assessing whether a religious mobilisation has an overt or a covert character. While the series of protests against the school-age reform represents a case of mobilisation with covert religious symbolism, the campaigns against sexuality education and the use of the concept of gender are characterised by overt religious populism. To characterise the dynamics of the two campaigns, the study uses the concept of a moral panic, emphasising the importance of moral entrepreneurs waging ideological war against the government and/or liberal experts conceived of as ‘folk devils’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Hecate Vergopoulos

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to tackle the issue of the meaning of tourism as it is being crippled by the economic crisis in Greece. Design/methodology/approach To do so, it brings together the findings of three different fieldworks related to tourism in Athens in times of crisis. Each one of these focuses on a specific player of tourism: a linguistic and semiological analysis led mainly on travel guides and ad campaigns deals with the industry of tourism; a linguistic analysis of tourists’ posts on a French web forum deals with the tourists themselves; and an ethnographical approach of alternative guided tours of Athens focuses on local players (associations and cooperatives offering out of the beaten tracks tours). Findings The whole study reveals that there is a misunderstanding between the industry and the consumers toward what the tourist practice should mean: whereas the tourists are in search of an ethical meaning, the industry claims there is no room for such issues. The alternative players, however, offer a political perspective that embraces the ethical issues raised by tourists. Originality/value They thus might, in the end, show us the way a so-called “civil society” could also have its own role to perform in tourism.


2007 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 567-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Clarke

AbstractSince the early 1990s, China has come a long way in legislating the foundational rules for its reformed economy. Virtually all of the important areas – contracts, business organizations, securities, bankruptcy and secured transactions, to name a few – are now covered by national legislation as well as lower-level regulations. Yet an important feature of a legal structure suited to a market economy is missing: the ability of the system to generate from below solutions to problems not adequately dealt with by existing legislation. The top-down model that has dominated Chinese law reform efforts to date can only do so much. What is needed now is a more welcoming attitude to market-generated solutions to the gaps and other problems that will invariably exist in legislation. The state's distrust of civil-society institutions and other bottom-up initiatives suggests, however, that this different approach will not come easily.


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