Is we they? A cross-cultural study of responses to COVID-19 updates in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda

This article delineates the material relations, routines and sensorial responses inhabited by people in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It grounds views on a discourse of behavioural change while exploring how Ugandans, Kenyans and Rwandans responded to COVID-19 messages populated on selected official government Twitter accounts. The article is a mixed methods study that employs a numeric and discursive analytic approach, with the nudge theory proving particularly congenial. Findings show that a civic nationalism was enunciated in the hinterland. The nomenclature evoked in the wake of enforcing pandemic restrictive measures is both politically and socially repressive. Far from presuming fixed identities, the conceptual thread that is knit together during the pandemic oscillates from broad support to a problem of behavioural fatigue.

Metamorphic Moment of the Indian Polity: Anatomizing the Evolution and Changing Dynamics of the Indian State against the Protean Nature of Cooperative Federalism

The elusive and paradoxical nature of Indian polity has been evident in the amalgamation of Western patterns of bureaucratic organization, participatory politics with indigenous practices and institutional framework that had an organic growth on the Indian soil. While post-colonial India was characterized by the incorporation of democratic political ethos and structural architecture, Westminster model of parliamentary government and representative legal institutions, it did not imply the exact replication of the British architectonic system of advanced industrial democracy. As the Indian political process is subjected to dramatic transmutations and cyclical changes, it has eventually acquired a mass character and vibrancy with the exuberant participation of marginalized and underprivileged political formations and social groups in the political arena, coupled with the regionalization of the polity, altering the terms of political domination and sowing the seeds of an increasingly complex mechanism of negotiation, competitive bargaining, alliance and coalition-building, in a cooperative federalist arrangement. The principle objective of this paper is to put an emphasis on the role of the Indian state, the transformation of Indian federalism and the political process, while holistically encapsulating the development and multidimensional patterns associated with the Indian political system, tracing the departure from the heyday of the Congress system and Nehruvian civic nationalism to the crystallization of a majoritarian edifice, propelled by Hindu Nationalism.

Institutional logics as a framework for understanding third sector development: an analysis of Quebec and Scotland

We compare the development of the third sector in Scotland and Quebec, which have developed ecosystems that distinguish them from the liberal non-profit regimes of the UK and Canada. We employ an institutional logics framework to consider how the rules, practices, values and beliefs of these ‘stateless nations’ have formed unique structures and identities of the third sector that diverge from their broader national context. Our model demonstrates how the development of the welfare state and approaches to implementing social policy, government–third sector relationships, civic nationalism and solidarity interact in an iterative process to create distinct third sectors.

Politics

This chapter discusses the Scottish independence debate as performed in hip-hop, which deals with issues of power, economics, stereotypes, and civic nationalism in a postcolonial era. The chapter shows how these artists reinvent and subvert the notion of “Otherness” and minority identity by using humor and wordplay to critique stereotypes of Scottishness, Englishness, (African American) mainstream hip-hop, and most politically, the status quo. Stanley Odd and Loki address the referendum in different ways, but both utilize rapping as a folk protest medium by which to sound out their concerns and relevant debates surrounding independence. Primary case study tracks discussed in this chapter include “Marriage Counselling,” “Antiheroics,” “Son I Voted Yes,” all by Stanley Odd, and Loki’s album Government Issue Music Protest (G.I.M.P).