Foucauldian Biopolitics, Irregular Immigrants and COVID-19 in Malaysia

This paper addresses issues related to irregular immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of providing a better understanding of the migration process in Malaysia. This article uses Foucauldian biopolitics as a theoretical framework to explain state practices on immigrant bodies. Firstly, it provides a general picture of irregular immigration in Southeast Asia and Malaysia; secondly, it summarises the effects of the pandemic; and lastly it provides an overall outlook of irregular immigrants and the practices they were exposed to at this time. This study adopts exploratory and explanatory qualitative research design and data collection techniques such as document analysis of non-governmental reports on immigrants, official statistics, declarations and articles produced by third party organisations and interviews with experts. This paper then adopts a post-structuralist perspective within an interpretative paradigm to comprehend the main problems, social arrangements and rationality of institutional dynamics of the management of irregular immigrants. The main findings show that increasing human rights violations of irregular migrants generate from a biopolitical mentality.

Logics, tensions and negotiations in the everyday life of a news-ranking algorithm

This article attends to tensions and negotiations surrounding the introduction and development of a news-ranking algorithm in a Swedish daily. Approaching algorithms as culture, being composed of collective human practices, the study emphasizes socio-institutional dynamics in the everyday life of the algorithm. The focus on tensions and negotiations is justified from an institutional perspective and operationalized through an analytical framework of logics. Empirically the study is based on interviews with 14 different in-house workers at the daily, journalists as well as programmers and market actors. The study shows that logics connected to both journalism and programming co-developed the news-ranking algorithm. Tensions and their negotiations around these logics contributed to its very development. One example is labeling of the algorithm as editor-led, allowing journalists to oversee some of its parameters. Social practices in the newsroom, such as Algorithm-Coffee, was also important for its development. In other words, different actors, tensions between them and how these were negotiated, co-constituted by the algorithm itself.

Institutional Dynamics and Economic Resilience in Central and Eastern EU Countries. Relevance for Policies

In the global context generated by the 2008-2009 economic crisis and by the current COVID-19 pan­demic, the analysis of the way in which territories can resist, return and adapt to shocks has become a priority for resilience-based policies. The paper aims to investigate the role of institutions in economic re­silience, in the particular case of Central and Eastern European countries since, despite the ongoing con­vergence process, the institutional gaps and weak­nesses of these states challenge their possibilities to recover after this health crisis, as well as to im­prove their resilience capacity. The methodological approach involves, firstly, a cross-country time-se­ries panel regression, using the annual data from 1996 until 2019. Secondly, we applied the principal component regression, in order to capture the coun­try specificities. The research focuses on the link­ages between institutional dynamics and economic resilience, an issue less reflected in literature. Our results confirm the influence of institutional factors on economic resilience and, more importantly, it is highlighted that the ‘one size fits all’ principle does not apply in the case of recovery and resilience pro­grams, which is due to the fact that institutions act differently, depending on various socio-economic and political contexts.

Producing zombie television: AMC, The Walking Dead, and the institutional dynamics of green-lighting hard-edged horror on cable

This study documents the industrial conditions that permitted the green-lighting and production of The Walking Dead (2010–present) on AMC, a network that built its reputation through high-brow series like Mad Men (2007–2015) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013) . The findings challenge two major arguments forwarded to make sense of the show’s airing: 1) the diagnostic model which suggests that zombies dovetailed into a zeitgeist-coloured paranoia of Others and the aftereffects of a neoliberalised social order and 2) the reputation model, which maintains that the industry track records of the personnel behind projects significantly enhances the chances of receiving a green-light.

Resilience through Synergy? The Legal Complex in Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Crisis

What types of institutional dynamics and conditions allow constitutional resilience in the face of attempts at undermining gains in a constitutional democracy? Using Sri Lanka as a case-study, I claim that the legal complex acting in synergy with independent public institutions (the Speaker of the Parliament) and civil society can produce constitutional resilience. Synergy between the legal complex and these institutions can transform constitutional vulnerability into constitutional resilience. I argue therefore that the legal complex theory must be extended to consider the ways in which it can work in synergy with other public institutions in being resilient against attempts at rolling back gains for constitutional democracy. I argue further that synergy between the legal complex and formal and informal institutions over the short term can only result in “simple” constitutional resilience. The development of “reflexive” constitutional resilience requires long-term synergy between the legal complex and other public institutions.

Social network and institution-based strategy research

Almost two decades ago, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 19(2/3): 251–267 Peng (2002) called attention to the promise of institution-based strategy research. The puzzle was to explain differences in strategies around the globe. Building on the work accomplished so far, I ask: Can institution-based strategy succeed when embedded in inappropriate social networks? Institutions and networks are usually studied as separate phenomena, yet each also defines the capabilities of the other. Institutions shape social network contacts and structures because institutions define opportunities for affiliation and the relative value of distinct contacts and network structures. At the same time, social networks shape institutions and organizations’ capabilities for institutional innovation. Thus, the social network in which a manager or organization is embedded can either amplify or counteract success in implementing institution-based strategy. After I review the co-constitutional nature of institutions and networks and discuss a number of sample studies using China as a productive research site, I sketch questions that need to be answered to more tightly integrate network behavior into institutional strategy research, and discuss four emerging areas of research into how network-strategy fit affects performance: (1) network fit to adaptive strategy, (2) network fit to change strategy, (3) institutional dynamics and network-strategy fit, and (4) institutional distance and network-strategy fit.

We are all institutionalized: Three works to challenge the conceit of a generically ‘academic’ study of religion

This essay encounters and considers together three very different recent works by scholars of religion, each one with strong Canadian connections: Maureen Matthews, Aaron Hughes and Donald Wiebe. The primary purpose, however, is to illuminate more broadly the importance of institutional dynamics in the formation and operation of the academic study of religion (i.e., not just in Canada). This stands in contrast to a well-established pattern of debating supposedly loftier questions of naming, disciplinary identity, idealized mandates and limits, etc. Furthermore, this essay suggests that scale of investigation matters – with a local, single-institution study revealing more, perhaps, about how we really do our work than either national or transnational efforts. In the end, reading these three books together suggests a tremendous diversity, including dynamic institutional diversity, in academic approaches to religion: scientific and non-scientific (predictably) but also, disciplined or expert and non-expert or academic administrative. Thus, the essay enjoins readers to take seriously a distinction between domains of ‘distributive’ and ‘concentrated’ expertise within the academy (e.g., Religious Studies versus, say, Civil Engineering), as well as the development of patterns of ‘altero-piety’ across the expert/nonexpert divide. In the end, such murky institutional dynamics appear to be shaping and impelling our field from the local institutional level (e.g., at the University of Winnipeg as documented by Matthews) to the transnational institutional level (e.g., in the International Association for the History of Religions as documented by Wiebe). Ultimately, one must conclude that stipulating that Religious Studies entail the academic study of religion is meaningless. ‘The academy’ is no more universal and unique ( sui generis?) than ‘religion’ itself. Rather, academic institutions are diverse and particular; and yet a variety of factors, ranging from deep colonial histories to the current global political economy of postsecondary higher education, all work to conceal the importance of the institutional basis of Religious Studies. Put another way (and pace Jonathan Z Smith): religion certainly is a creation of the scholar’s study – yet, far from imagining this scholar’s study as a place set apart (as it were), we must start imagining it as a historical, social and institutional location. That would take us one small but further step towards the all-important goal of disciplinary ‘reflexivity”.