Ideology, Hegemony, Discourse: A Critical Review of Theories of Knowledge and Power

For over a century, social theorists have attempted to explain why those who lack economic power consent to hierarchies of social and political power. They have used ideology, hegemony and discourse as key concepts to explain the intersections between the social production of knowledge and the perpetuation of power relations. The Marxist concept of ideology describes how the dominant ideas within a given society reflect the interests of a ruling economic class. In this paper, I trace the movement from this concept of ideology to models of hegemony and discourse. I then trace a second set of ruptures in theories of ideology, hegemony and discourse. Marx and others link ideology to a vision of society dominated by economic class as a field of social power. However, theorists of gender and race have questioned the place of class as the locus of power. I conclude by arguing that key theorists of gender and race Hall, Smith, hooks and Haraway offer a more complex understanding of how our consent to networks of power is produced within contemporary capitalist societies. This argument has important implications for theory and practice directed at destabilizing our consent to power

Public Engagement in Climate Communication on China’s Weibo: Network Structure and Information Flows

This article provides an empirical study of public engagement with climate change discourse in China by analysing how Chinese publics participate in the public discussion around two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and how individual users interact with state and elite actors on the pre-eminent Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. Using social network analysis methods and a temporal comparison, we examine the structure of climate communication networks, the direction of information flows among multiple types of Weibo users, and the changes in information diffusion patterns between the pre- and post-Paris periods. Our results show there is an increasing yet constrained form of public engagement in climate communication on Weibo alongside China’s pro-environmental transition in recent years. We find an expansion of public engagement as shown by individual users’ increasing influence in communication networks and the diversification of frames associated with climate change discourse. However, we also find three restrictive interaction tendencies that limit Weibo’s potential to facilitate multi-directional communication and open public deliberation of climate change, including the decline of mutually balanced dialogic interactions, the lack of bottom-up information flows, and the reinforcement of homophily tendencies amongst eco-insiders and governmental users. These findings highlight the coexistence of both opportunities and constraints of Weibo being a venue for public engagement with climate communication and as a forum for a new climate politics and citizen participation in China

Do neighbourhood environmental perceptions affect practices?

In this paper, we examine how environmental practices related to public transit and urban green space use are influenced by perceptions of local level environmental change, neighbourhood inhabitation, and socio-demographic factors. The analysis shows that perceptions of change and neighbourhood inhabitation offer better explanations for changing local environmental practices than socio-demographic orientations. We contribute to social practice theory by drawing attention to the interplay of environmental perceptions and neighbourhood inhabitation as factors that facilitate changing environmental practices. By gaining insight into the relationship between perceptions of change and environmental practices, we thereby learn how sustainability goals, such as those embodied by SDG11, can be translated into social practices at the community level.Dans cet article, nous examinons comment les pratiques environnementales liées au transport en commun et à l’utilisation des espaces verts urbains sont influencées par les perceptions du changement environnemental au niveau local, l’habitation des quartiers et les facteurs sociodémographiques. L’analyse montre que les perceptions du changement et de l’habitat du quartier offrent de meilleures explications pour l’évolution des pratiques environnementales locales que les orientations sociodémographiques. Nous contribuons è la théorie de la pratique sociale en attirant l’attention sur l’interaction des perceptions environnementales et de l’habitation du quartier en tant que facteurs qui facilitent l’évolution des pratiques environnementales. En acquérant un aperçu de la relation entre les perceptions du changement et les pratiques environnementales, nous apprenons ainsi comment les objectifs de durabilité, tels que ceux incarnées par ODD (Agenda 2030 du développement durable), peuvent être traduits en pratiques sociales au niveau communautaire

Media Coverage and Perceived Policy Influence of Environmental Actors: Good Strategy or Pyrrhic Victory?

In this article we analyze how media coverage for environmental actors (individual environmental activists and environmental movement organizations) is associated with their perceived policy influence in Canadian climate change policy networks. We conceptualize media coverage as the total number of media mentions an actor received in Canada’s two main national newspapers—the Globe and Mail and National Post. We conceptualize perceived policy influence as the total number of times an actor was nominated by other actors in a policy network as being perceived to be influential in domestic climate change policy making in Canada. Literature from the field of social movements, agenda setting, and policy networks suggests that environmental actors who garner more media coverage should be perceived as more influential in policy networks than actors who garner less coverage. We assess support for this main hypothesis in two ways. First, we analyze how actor attributes (such as the type of actor) are associated with the amount of media coverage an actor receives. Second, we evaluate whether being an environmental actor shapes the association between media coverage and perceived policy influence. We find a negative association between media coverage and perceived policy influence for individual activists, but not for environmental movement organizations. This case raises fundamental theoretical questions about the nature of relations between media and policy spheres, and the efficacy of media for signaling and mobilizing policy influence

Donor-Acceptor Oligorotaxanes Made to Order

Five donor–acceptor oligorotaxanes made up of dumbbells composed of tetraethylene glycol chains, interspersed with three and five 1,5-dioxynaphthalene units, and terminated by 2,6-diisopropylphenoxy stoppers, have been prepared by the threading of discrete numbers of cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) rings, followed by a kinetically controlled stoppering protocol that relies on click chemistry. The well-known copper(I)-catalyzed alkyne–azide cycloaddition between azide functions placed at the ends of the polyether chains and alkyne-bearing stopper precursors was employed during the final kinetically controlled template-directed synthesis of the five oligorotaxanes, which were characterized subsequently by ^1H NMR spectroscopy at low temperature (233 K) in deuterated acetonitrile. The secondary structures, as well as the conformations, of the five oligorotaxanes were unraveled by spectroscopic comparison with the dumbbell and ring components. By focusing attention on the changes in chemical shifts of some key probe protons, obtained from a wide range of low-temperature spectra, a picture emerges of a high degree of folding within the thread protons of the dumbbells of four of the five oligorotaxanes—the fifth oligorotaxane represents a control compound in effect— brought about by a combination of C-H···O and π–π stacking interactions between the p-electron-deficient bipyridinium units in the rings and the π-electron-rich 1,5-dioxynaphthalene units and polyether chains in the dumbbells. The secondary structures of a foldamer-like nature have received further support from a solid-state superstructure of a related [3]pseudorotaxane and density functional calculations performed thereon

Integral equation for inhomogeneous condensed bosons generalizing the Gross-Pitaevskii differential equation

We give here the derivation of a Gross-Pitaevskii--type equation for inhomogeneous condensed bosons. Instead of the original Gross-Pitaevskii differential equation, we obtain an integral equation that implies less restrictive assumptions than are made in the very recent study of Pieri and Strinati [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003) 030401]. In particular, the Thomas-Fermi approximation and the restriction to small spatial variations of the order parameter invoked in their study are avoided.Comment: Phys. Rev. A (accepted

Measurement of the ground-state distributions in bistable mechanically interlocked molecules using slow scan rate cyclic voltammetry

In donor–acceptor mechanically interlocked molecules that exhibit bistability, the relative populations of the translational isomers—present, for example, in a bistable [2]rotaxane, as well as in a couple of bistable [2]catenanes of the donor–acceptor vintage—can be elucidated by slow scan rate cyclic voltammetry. The practice of transitioning from a fast scan rate regime to a slow one permits the measurement of an intermediate redox couple that is a function of the equilibrium that exists between the two translational isomers in the case of all three mechanically interlocked molecules investigated. These intermediate redox potentials can be used to calculate the ground-state distribution constants, K. Whereas, (i) in the case of the bistable [2]rotaxane, composed of a dumbbell component containing π-electron-rich tetrathiafulvalene and dioxynaphthalene recognition sites for the ring component (namely, a tetracationic cyclophane, containing two π-electron-deficient bipyridinium units), a value for K of 10 ± 2 is calculated, (ii) in the case of the two bistable [2]catenanes—one containing a crown ether with tetrathiafulvalene and dioxynaphthalene recognition sites for the tetracationic cyclophane, and the other, tetrathiafulvalene and butadiyne recognition sites—the values for K are orders (one and three, respectively) of magnitude greater. This observation, which has also been probed by theoretical calculations, supports the hypothesis that the extra stability of one translational isomer over the other is because of the influence of the enforced side-on donor–acceptor interactions brought about by both π-electron-rich recognition sites being part of a macrocyclic polyether

A Push-Button Molecular Switch

The preparation, characterization, and switching mechanism of a unique single-station mechanically switchable hetero[2]catenane are reported. The facile synthesis utilizing a “threading-followed-by-clipping” protocol features Cu^(2+)-catalyzed Eglinton coupling as a mild and efficient route to the tetrathiafulvalene-based catenane in high yield. The resulting mechanically interlocked molecule operates as a perfect molecular switch, most readily described as a “push-button” switch, whereby two discrete and fully occupied translational states are toggled electrochemically at incredibly high rates. This mechanical switching was probed using a wide variety of experimental techniques as well as quantum-mechanical investigations. The fundamental distinctions between this single-station [2]catenane and other more traditional bi- and multistation molecular switches are significant