Struggles to remain in Kigali’s “unplanned” settlements: the case of Bannyahe

Examining the precarious status of informal settlements in Kigali at a time of large-scale planning-induced expropriation, this article considers urban contestation in the context of the city’s changing spatial-legal regime. We analyse the case of one informal settlement’s expropriation and relocation – the settlement of Bannyahe – and the contestation that has ensued as resident property owners take the District of Gasabo to court. Through interviews with settlement residents, we follow the fates of these displaced urban citizens and consider their struggles to remain in their homes. Finally, we suggest that such contestation over legal procedural regularity and negotiation over property valuation at the neighbourhood level forms the limit of overt opposition to the city’s masterplan. Terming these limits to contestation “silent boundaries” that circumscribe contestation for property owners in the Bannyahe settlement, we offer perspectives on contestation and compromise amidst urban socio-spatial reordering in the “new Kigali”

Long waves of political contestation

This paper develops a wave theory of political contestation, and places the current economic and political turmoil in a historical perspective. Based on legitimacy, it serves as an alternative to the waves of democratization of Samuel Huntington (1991). The theoretical framework is based on two main theories: the theory of long waves in political economics and the theory about state-legitimacy and fiscal crisis. In the first section, this paper gives a short overview of the different economic dynamics which over time have been incorporated in long wave theories, predominantly based on the works of Kondratieff (1979) and Schumpeter (1939), and puts the current economic situation in this perspective. The second part analyzes the general interdependency between long waves and politics, and the original criticisms of the endogenous model by Trotsky (1923). The third section considers long waves theories in politics, in particular Samuel Huntington's theory, and discusses the main criticisms of his theory. The fourth section analyzes the influence of the long wave upswing and downturn on state-legitimacy, and is based on the work of O'Connor (2001) and Habermas (1975). The fifth section combines the long wave's concept with legitimacy and protest against a long wave theory of political contestation and gives the first elements of some empirical evidence, comparing the political contestation in the thirties and today. The sixth section draws conclusions and takes a look on the need for further research

Framing the collaborative economy - Voices of contestation

Within the context of multiple crises and change, a range of practices discussed under the umbrella term of collaborative (or sharing) economy have been gaining considerable attention. Supporters build an idealistic vision of collaborative societies. Critics have been stripping the concept of its visionary potential, questioning its revolutionary nature. In the study, these debates are brought down to the local level in search for common perceptions among the co-creators of the concept in Vienna, Austria. Towards this aim a Q study is conducted, i.e. a mixed method enabling analyses of subjective perceptions on socially contested topics. Four framings are identified: Visionary Supporters, Market Optimists, Visionary Critics, and Skeptics, each bringing their values, visions, and practical goals characteristic of different understanding of the collaborative economy. The study questions the need for building a globally-applicable definition of the concept, calls for more context-sensitivity, exploratory studies, and city-level multi-stakeholder dialogues

CULTURAL CONTESTATION IN RITUAL FOOD : AMERICAN THANKSGIVING AND JAVANESE SLAMETAN

Cultural contestation is inevitable issue related to fundamental questions of collective identity. Localism, nationalism and globalism is being questioned as the globalized world enable culture experiences transformation and shifting which may endanger identity . This paper is going to explore how cultural contestation in defining identity also happens in food consumption. Ritual food of American Thanksgiving and Javanese Slametan witness that American and Javanese identity is fluid

The LIOn's share: How the Liberal International Order Contributes to its Own Legitimacy Crisis. Harvard CES Open Forum Series2019-2020

The liberal international order (LIO) is experiencing a legitimacy crisis in its Western heartland. What causes this crisis? Existing approaches focus on the LIO’s unequal allocation of wealth and values that produces losers and thus breeds dissatisfaction. Yet, why this dissatisfaction translates into a delegitimation of the order rather than a contestation over policies remains unaccounted for. Complementing the cultural and economic backlash hypotheses, this paper advances an institutionalist explanationfor the current crisis of the LIO, which accounts for the growing resistance to the LIO with a political backlash hypothesis. Our argument is that the institutional characteristics of the LIO’s political order trigger self-undermining processes by inciting opposition that cannot be politically accommodated and is thus bound to turn into polity contestation. In particular, we hold that IOs’ predominantly technocratic legitimation rationale on the one hand, and their increasing political authority with distributional effects on the other, create a democracy gap. It implies that avenues to absorb opposition through input channels are largely missing and thus incite the erosion of the LIO’s general acceptance. We illustrate the plausibility of this argument with evidence from the European Union (EU) as well as the international regimes on trade and human rights

Assault on self: intimate partner abuse and the contestation of identity

The complexities of intimate partner abuse and violence have been studied from a range of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives. It is argued here that symbolic interactionist analyses offer specific and powerful insights into this particular interactional domain. This article is based on data generated by a topical life-history case study of a well-educated, middle-class, middle-aged man, whose wife subjected him to sustained unilateral violence and abuse, resulting in deleterious consequences for his health and well-being. Data were gathered via a series of in-depth interviews and a personal diary. The analysis draws on Goffman’s conceptualization of “possessional territory” as one of the “territories of the self,” in order to examine the role of possessions in the interactional routines of intimate partner abuse. Key words: intimate partner abuse, domestic violence, abused men, possessional territory, Erving Goffma

Transhumanism and/as Whiteness

Transhumanism is interrogated from critical race theoretical and decolonial perspectives with a view to establishing its ‘algorithmic’ relationship to historical processes of race formation (or racialization) within Euro-American historical experience. Although the Transhumanist project is overdetermined vis-à-vis its raison-d’être, it is argued that a useful way of thinking about this project is in terms of its relationship to the shifting phenomenon of ‘whiteness’. It is suggested that Transhumanism constitutes a techno-scientific response to the phenomenon of ‘White Crisis’ at least partly prompted by ‘critical’ posthumanist contestation of Eurocentrically-universal humanism

The contested politics of climate change and the crisis of neo-liberalism

Climate change must be placed in relation to broader contestation of unequal social and environmental relations and specifically in relation to the crisis of neoliberalism. I contest those accounts of climate change which isolate carbon emissions from the unequal social and environmental relations upon which neoliberal globalization depends. I locate the mobilizations during the COP15 round of climate negotiations in relation to political trajectories that have shaped antagonistic ways of constructing climate change politics. These forms of contentious action challenge the dominant terms of climate change politics in a number of important ways, and at the same time the repressive policing of demonstrations and actions open up the space for protests and for productive debates around the environmental politics of climate change

Contesting Genetic Knowledge-Practices in Livestock Breeding: Biopower, Biosocial Collectivities, and Heterogeneous Resistances

Cattle and sheep breeders in the UK and elsewhere increasingly draw on genetic techniques in order to make breeding decisions. Many breeders support such techniques, while others argue against them for a variety of reasons, including their preference for the ‘traditions' of visual-based and pedigree-based selections. Meanwhile, even for those institutions and breeders who promote genetic techniques, the outcomes are not always as predicted. We build on our recent use of Foucault's discussions of biopower to examine the effects of the introduction of genetic techniques in UK livestock breeding in order to begin to explore the diffuse and capillary nature of resistance within relations of biopower. We focus specifically on how resistance and contestation can be understood through the joint lenses of biopower and an understanding of livestock breeding as knowledge-practices enacted within heterogeneous biosocial collectivities. In some instances these collectivities coalesce around shared endeavour, such as increasing the valency of genetic evaluation within livestock breeding. Yet such mixed collectivities also open up opportunities for counter-conduct: heterogeneous resistances to and contestations of genetic evaluation as something represented as progressive and inevitable. We focus on exploring such modes of resistance using detailed empirical research with livestock breeders and breeding institutions. We demonstrate how in different and specific ways geneticisation becomes problematised, and is contested and made more complex, through the knowledge-practices of breeders, the bodies of animals, and the complex relationships between different institutions in livestock breeding and rearing

Speaking Crisis in the Eurozone Debt Crisis: Exploring the Potential and Limits of Transformational Agonistic Conflict

Agonism as a political theory emphasizes the ontological aspect of conflict in human political interaction. This article aims to shed light on the political practice of agonism – and in doing so on its limits – by viewing 'crisis discourse' as an agonistic political practice. As my analysis of the Dutch Socialist Party and the Freedom Party’s speech in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis shows, crisis discourse aimed to (re)create a ‘people’ and to justify radical change in economic and social structures. Crisis discourse is employed to construct an 'other' that can be based on ethnic and nationalist terms and to justify retroactive application of the law and the stripping of Dutch citizens of their rights. This attention to crisis discourse as an agonistic political practice highlights an unease within agonism itself: where must the agonist accepts limits to the conflict and contestation she so values? The article starts with Chantal Mouffe's answer to this question - her insistence that legitimate conflict must always recognize the shared values of equality and liberty - and proceeds to show that Mouffe's view unnecessarily relies on a deliberative democratic desire for consensus. Other than Mouffe, I draw on Honig’s emphasis of perpetual contestation to propose that the issue of limits can be best answered by reference to the core of agonistic thought: the preservation of the struggle over political norms and processes. It is not shared values or even a shared political space that matters, but that the political space of the ‘people’ – however contested membership therein might be – remains a place that the 'other' can re-ente